TLVFest, the International LGBTQ+ Film Festival founded by Yair Hochner, will take place at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque from October 22 – 31, 2026. Now in its 21st year, the festival is under the artistic direction of Gili Porat and produced by Yael Lavi. After 20 years of activity, the festival bids farewell to its founder and artistic director Yair Hochner, who established a central platform for LGBTQ+ cinema in Israel and nurtured generations of filmmakers and a loyal audience. The festival, one of the flagship festivals of the Tel Aviv Cinematheque, provides a platform for queer filmmaking from Israel and around the world. This year’s festival program invites new audiences to discover queer cinema in all its diversity, with stories of love, family, faith and freedom, alongside humor, music and queer joy.
Festival Highlights:
At the heart of the international program is Rose, directed by Markus Schleinzer, the film that won Sandra Hüller the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance in Berlin. Also screening are Gugu’s World, winner of the Crystal Bear and the Grand Prix of the International Jury in the Generation Kplus section at the Berlinale; Iván & Hadoum, winner of the Teddy Award for Best Feature Film; and Trial of Hein, winner of the Teddy Jury Award. Rose and Gugu’s World were selected to represent Austria and Brazil, respectively, in the race for the 2027 Academy Awards.
From the Cannes Film Festival come Roma Elastika by Bertrand Mandico, starring Marion Cotillard and Noémie Merlant, which screened in the Midnight Screenings section; A Woman’s Life, starring Léa Drucker and Mélanie Thierry; and Another Day, starring Adèle Exarchopoulos, both from the Official Competition.
Among the international films, Stop! That! Train!, a camp comedy by Adam Shankman starring RuPaul and RuPaul’s Drag Race stars including Ginger Minj and Jujubee, stands out. Two train attendants aboard a luxury train set out to save the passengers from a storm, in a world where RuPaul plays the President of the United States. In the crime comedy The Wrong Girls by Dylan Meyer, Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat play broke best friends who become entangled with an experimental substance that gives them telepathic powers. The film also stars Seth Rogen and Geena Davis.
No Rest for the Wicked, which earned director Kasper Kalle and actor Pilou Asbæk (Game of Thrones) directing and acting awards at the Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal, presents a Gothic romance between a fisherman and a whaler in the Faroe Islands of the 19th century. The film is based on a story by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, one of the pioneers of the struggle for gay rights. The Captive by Alejandro Amenábar returns to Miguel de Cervantes’s years in captivity in Algiers, before the writing of Don Quixote, offering a queer interpretation of this chapter in his life in a story of desire, power and freedom.
In Bookends, starring F. Murray Abraham and Charlie Barnett, a young man moves in with his grandparents in a Jewish assisted-living facility and falls in love with his grandfather’s doctor. Ephemera follows two women over a night in Shanghai, on the eve of a separation, while Tiger focuses on a gay masseur in Tokyo whose sister threatens to out him.
Special events include a 35mm screening of Bound, the feature debut of sisters Lana and Lilly Wachowski (The Matrix), marking the 30th anniversary of its release; a screening of the cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show; and more.
The Israeli program will feature the premiere of A Man Walks Down the Street by Yuval Hadadi, starring Angel Bonanni and Uri Banai, about a man who returns to Israel after 30 years and becomes involved in a romance with a younger man. Also screening are Where To? by Assaf Machnes, centered on the relationship between a Palestinian Uber driver and a young Israeli in Berlin; Grocery Store by Yuval Shani, a coming-of-age story set on the outskirts of Jerusalem; Tell Me Everything by Moshe Rosenthal, winner of the Ophir Award for Best Film and a participant in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at Sundance; and Thou Shalt Love, the final feature film by the late award-winning director Nitzan Gilady, starring Yael Elkana and Michael Moshonov, about an ultra-Orthodox yoga teacher whose marriage and faith begin to unravel.
The festival will also screen compelling documentaries, including Manhood by Daniel Lombroso, which follows efforts to make penis enlargement procedures as commonplace as Botox treatments while examining male body image and the business of insecurity; Mineshaft: The Cruising Murders, about a murder case connected to New York’s gay nightlife in the 1970s; My Brother’s Killer by Rachel Mason, whose work on the film helped revive the investigation into the murder of Billy London; What’s Up, Extremists!, about LGBTQ+ people who fled persecution in Russia; and The Dads by Luchina Fisher, about fathers who organize to protect their transgender and nonbinary children. Time Warp, which received a Special Jury Mention in the Documentary Competition at Tribeca, follows a drag theater troupe staging a production inspired by The Rocky Horror Picture Show in a mining town in Wyoming.
The festival will also feature international competitions for narrative and documentary films, as well as Israeli competitions for new local productions. Juries from Israel and around the world will award prizes to outstanding films and filmmakers in a program that combines debut films and emerging voices with works that have already received international recognition.
Gili Porat, Artistic Director of the Festival: “When we built this year’s program, we asked what happens to the world when you look at it from a queer perspective. Alongside familiar stars and films from the major festivals, it was important to us to discover new voices, bring forgotten histories back to the screen and create a live encounter between film, audience and community. I hope audiences will come not only for the films they already want to see but will also walk into a theater by chance and walk out in love with something they didn’t know they were looking for.”
The festival, produced by the Tel Aviv Cinematheque, promotes local filmmaking and provides a platform for many films that do not receive sustained commercial distribution in Israel. It is supported by the Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality, the Ministry of Culture, Friends and Delta Air Lines.
The full program and tickets are available on the Cinematheque website:
https://www.cinema.co.il/פסטיבל-גאה
*Information and text on the films was provided by the festival.
