You are welcome to submit documentary, narrative, experimental, animated, or episodic projects about LGBTQ+ people and their communities. Before submitting your work, please review our eligibility requirements and guidelines below.

The 2027 Frameline Completion Fund is now accepting submissions. To apply, please fill out our application by October 9, 2026 at 11:59 PM PST.

• Submission Window Opens: August 31, 2026
• Submission Window Closes: October 9, 2026
• Grantees Announced: January 2027

The Frameline Completion Fund provides grants to both emerging and established filmmakers. This program seeks to provide a much-needed source of financial contributions to artists who are struggling 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. Since 1991, Frameline has awarded $717,500 to 203 projects through the Completion Fund.

The Completion Fund accepts projects in all categories, from documentary and narrative works to experimental, animated, or episodic projects, so long as the films are about LGBTQ+ people and their communities.

The program seeks to support works by and for under-served communities. With this in mind, we encourage submissions from women, people of color, transgender people, intersex people, asexual people, nonbinary people, disabled people, and other underrepresented people and communities.

Please Note: We cannot consider films without a rough cut. See below for more information on eligibility requirements.

• Only applications that provide a full working cut of the film will be considered. Temporary sound, color, or visual effects are allowed — just let us know what’s missing or still being worked on in your application. However, we cannot consider films without a rough cut.
• Grants are given for completion only, so 90% of production must be finished. If you aren’t in the post-production phase, you must be ready to begin post-production as soon as this funding is in place.
• Grants will only be given to projects about LGBTQ+ people and their communities.
• Grants are only given to individuals with creative and financial control of the project. In the case of collaboration, a sole project director must be designated as the applicant.
• Grants will be given to projects in any film/video format, of any length, genre, or nationality.
• Frameline does not accept AI-generated work for any of our grant programs or exhibitions at this time.
• Members of the Frameline staff and/or Frameline Board of Directors are ineligible.

Please Note: Frameline reserves the right to deem ineligible, or alter a project’s award status at any point prior to the disbursement of funds. Projects may be deemed ineligible for perceived violations of Frameline’s Code of Conduct and or projects that could harm the organization.

In 2026, projects finished with assistance from the Frameline Completion Fund include: Barbara Forever, Lady Champagne, Hunky Jesus, Jaripeo, Adam’s Apple, and But Still, We Move.

Past Frameline Completion Fund recipients 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, Heightened Scrutiny, 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, Only Good Things, and The Brandon Teena Story, among many others.

Please find a full list of past recipients in our Completion Fund Archives.