New York, NY - MIX FEST returns for its 2026 edition November 19-21, opening at BAM and continuing for two nights at Dixon Place. Founded in 1987 by writer Sarah Schulman and filmmaker Jim Hubbard, MIX NYC produces the longest-established queer film festival in New York City. Now led by a new generation of artists, including Co-Executive Directors Blake Pruitt and Ariel Ottey, MIX NYC continues its legacy of championing queer experimental cinema. At this year’s 39th annual festival, audiences will gather around experimental films that together offer a cross-section of contemporary queer and trans thinking, feeling, and living from around the world. Each evening will feature two thoughtfully curated programs followed by Q&As, culminating in an electrifying closing night party.
This year's lineup features 23 films from 17 countries — including 16 premieres — with 73% directed by Women, Non-Binary, and/or Trans filmmakers and 56% by People of Color.
On opening night, Maja Čule's debut feature film Electronic Witches (Elektroničke Vještice) kicks off the festival, followed by a shorts block that harkens back to MIX FEST’s past by offering an array of formal and conceptual approaches to matters of desire, sex, romance, and love. The second night begins with Diego Semerene's singular feature Portrait of the Father at 71, in which the filmmaker's father reacts to a task he was given 20 years prior: to play the role of Semerene’s various lovers on screen. Friday evening's late slot extends ideas of family from the biological to the chosen, the living to the ancestral, and the spirited to the scarring. Closing night explores apocalyptic observations, late capitalist nightmares, and the necessity of resistance before taking a final plunge through a series of portals that seek to facilitate different forms of transcendence.
This year’s festival program was developed by Director of Programming, Jac Renée Bruneau, in close collaboration with programmers Kelly Filreis, Xavy Lang, Payton McCarty-Simas, Sasha Slansky, Lucy Talbot Allen, and J Triangular, with support from 15 screeners.
MIX is also proud to announce our new Official Distribution & Exhibition Partner: LHB Productions. The partnership expands MIX's year-round One Night Stand programming and explores new models for queer short filmmakers to achieve sustained discovery and monetization.
November 19 (Opening Night)
November 20 (Second Night)
November 21 (Closing Night)
Individual tickets can be purchased here, and festival passes, offering full access to all festival events, are available here.
MIX NYC believes community safety is a collective responsibility grounded in consent, respect, accountability, and mutual care. We are committed to creating safer spaces for queer, trans, and marginalized communities through anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-capitalism, anti-zionism, pro-worker values, and a pro-sex approach to community building. Read our full Community Safety, Sexual Harassment & Accountability Policy here.
BAM and Dixon Place are wheelchair accessible. All films will have English captions available, and all films that use non-English languages include English subtitles.
MIX NYC (est. 1987) is a non-profit organization dedicated to platforming, promoting, and supporting LGBTQIA2S+ experimental filmmakers and artists. Through our annual MIX FEST and year-round programming, we are committed to showing films that challenge conventional filmmaking practices, test bold ideas, and offer insight into the wide, evolving array of queer experience. MIX NYC was founded by author Sarah Schulman and filmmaker Jim Hubbard out of a need to make space for the lives and lens-based work of queer people during the onset of the AIDS epidemic. Today, we continue to provide opportunities for queer experimental filmmakers, and serve as an incubator for creativity by fostering collaboration, innovation, and dialogue amongst a community that seeks and values it. Read more about our history here.
For More Information, Contact:
Kayla Franklin, Press Manager
press@mixnyc.org
