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The current application cycle for the Frameline Completion Fund is now closed. The next submission window will open again around October 2025.
The Frameline Completion Fund provides grants to emerging and established filmmakers. This program seeks to provide a much-needed source of financial contributions to artists who often struggle to secure funding to complete their works. Grants up to $5,000 are available for the completion of films that represent and reflect LGBTQ+ life in all its complexity and richness.
For over a quarter century, Frameline has awarded $667,500 to 190 projects (see all past recipients here) to help ensure that LGBTQ+ film/video projects are completed and viewed by wider audiences. Projects finished with assistance from the Frameline Completion Fund include Pariah, Go Fish, No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics, Lingua Franca, North by Current, The Watermelon Woman, By Hook or By Crook, Call Her Ganda, Chavela, Appropriate Behavior, To Be Takei, Last Call at Maud’s, The New Black, 1985, It Came from Kuchar, Brother to Brother, Kumu Hina, Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen, The Cockettes, Vito, Freeheld, We Were Here, The Happy Sad, Signature Move, In the Summers, and The Brandon Teena Story.
Submissions are accepted for documentary, narrative, experimental, animated, or episodic projects about LGBTQ+ people and their communities. The Fund also seeks to bring new work to under-served audiences; with this in mind, we especially encourage applications by women, people of color, transgender people, intersex people, asexual people, non-binary people, disabled people, and other underrepresented people and communities.
Applications are now closed.
Yes, we welcome and encourage international applicants, however the proposal must be submitted in English, and the rough cut of the film will need English subtitles.
No, there is no application fee.
The standard Completion Fund grant ranges from $1,000 to $5,000 although the jury can recommend a higher or lower amount.
Frameline’s Programming team will review all applications and work samples and will select semi-finalists to recommend to an independent jury. The jury of media professionals will convene to collectively select the grant recipients. The names of the panelists will remain confidential until after the awards are announced.
Jury members are industry professionals, including filmmakers, curators, critics, and academics. Past jurors have included Elegence Bratton (filmmaker, The Inspection), Tina Takemoto (Dean of Humanities and Sciences at California College of Arts San Francisco), Lex Sloan (Roxie Theater Executive Director and filmmaker), and Stefano Gonzalez (film producer and Transgress Studios LLC founder and CEO).
Applicants will be notified of their status in January 2025. Please note that we will not be able to provide additional information about the status of your application before this time.
Unfortunately, due to the high number of submissions the Frameline Completion Fund does not provide critiques, screening notes, or individual reviews of any films not chosen for finishing fund grants.
We do not recommend re-submitting the same film for consideration unless significant changes to the project have been made.
Grant funds may be used for any post-production costs including closed captioning and audio descriptions, editing, special effects and graphics, music licensing, and photo licensing.
For more information or additional questions about the Completion Fund, please email programming@frameline.org.
We're excited to keep you in the loop on all things Frameline (with no spam - ever!)