SQIFF (Scottish Queer International Film Festival) is a charity formed with the aim of showcasing diverse queer cinema and uplifting creative voices from the LGBTQIA+ community in Scotland and beyond. The organisation runs an annual film festival in Glasgow, pop-up and year-round events, and community-focused programmes across Scotland.

Our journey started in 2015 with a group of volunteers who were passionate about the power of queer storytelling. Over the past 10 years, SQIFF has grown to become one of the largest queer film festivals in the UK, and remains the only festival of its kind in Scotland. Each year, SQIFF presents a vibrant and inspiring programme of films from across the world. By showing work that people might not otherwise get a chance to see, the festival aims to facilitate a space for conversations on LGBTQIA+ topics and issues.

Community is at the heart of SQIFF. We believe that cinema is for everyone, and SQIFF has been a champion in creating an accessible festival environment. We were one of the first festivals to adopt a pay-what-you-can (sliding scale) pricing model for our events, a practice that has since been embraced by many other festivals and institutions across the nation. As a leading advocate for accessibility, we implement various measures including large-print text, live captioning, BSL-English interpretation, descriptive subtitles, audio description to ensure that all audience members can participate in SQIFF, regardless of their needs. Our goal is to challenge inequalities and remove barriers to accessing arts and culture. We aim to support the sector to be better equipped with knowledge about accessibility to serve a wider audience.

SQIFF has been collaborating with partners across the UK to initiate programmes and projects that empower emerging filmmakers and amplify grassroots voices. Our initiatives include Filmmaking Workshops, Queer Filmmakers Group, and SQIFF Queer Talent Directory, among others. Beyond film exhibition, we aim to support marginalised groups within the LGBTQIA+ community by providing a networking system for queer filmmakers to further develop their skills and inspire those who want to share their stories through moving images. We currently run a Discord server with over 130 members who work in the film industry in Scotland.

SQIFF is a BAFTA-qualifying festival, which means that British short films screened at our event may be eligible to enter the British Short Film and British Short Animation categories at the annual EE BAFTA Film Awards. Our team will notify the filmmakers who qualify to submit.

Awards & Prizes

SQIFF holds a Best Scottish Award for our programming strand of Scottish Shorts, gifting one prize to a selected film, decided by selected judges.

Rules & Terms

Terms & Conditions:

We are open to short films (50 minutes and under). Films must have had people with lived LGBTQIA+ experience involved in the production. We will prioritise films made by people/communities with typically less access to film industries. For example Black and PoC, Deaf, Disabled, working class, and refugee and immigrant filmmakers.

SQIFF is a charity which receives public funding for promoting and supporting LGBTQIA+ filmmakers and communities. We will offer set screening fees for films received via submissions of £50 per screening for short films. Our Festival is ticketed on a sliding scale with free entry available to anyone who could not otherwise afford to come along. SQIFF is designed to be accessible to the most marginalised and exploited people within our LGBTQIA+ communities.

We are looking for:
SQIFF is interested in showing work created by and about queer/LGBTQIA+ individuals and communities. We are open within this to all subject matter and styles.

We screen all films in the Festival with English language descriptive subtitles. This supports Deaf, hard of hearing, and various other audiences to access the festival. Since 2021, we require all films selected for the programme to provide their own open or closed captions. We have applied for funding to offer online captioning workshops and email support to filmmakers with less experience in creating captions as needed. It is also possible that some of our submissions viewers will need captions to be able to experience your film. Therefore, your chances of being selected for the festival will be higher if you submit a version of your film with captions.

We are also applying for funding to create audio description for all English, sign, or visual language films in our programme. We therefore appreciate films which already have audio description available.

Year of completion:
Films may have been completed at any time.

Premiere status:
We do not have any premiere status requirements and it's ok if your film is viewable online.

Fee waivers:
Submission fees are on a Pay What You Can basis. Please choose the submission fee you are able to afford. If you are able to pay to submit your film, we very much appreciate this as it helps support the most marginalised and exploited queer communities to submit their films and attend our Festival. If you need to submit your film for free, that's completely fine, and we will treat your submission the same as everyone else's. Please email us at info@sqiff.org to get a fee waiver code.

The Pay What You Can price options for short films are £50, £40, £30, £20, £10, £5, or free fee waiver.

This submission policy is to challenge the lack of access to filmmaking and institutional film culture for people from the most marginalised and exploited backgrounds. If you have any questions about what to pay for your submission, please email info@sqiff.org.
32 Reviews
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  • Dominik Gasser

    Thanks for having our short "ANDRO" for it's UK Premiere! Big love to everybody in the friendly and hard-working team that makes the festival happen. :)

    November 2025
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  • Ishizaki Masataka

    I could not join the festival though, but every single moment when I had communication with them, I always feel they are amazing, professional, serious to serve our voice not just only to LGBTQIA+ community. It's like as universal matters. Artistic, Exclusive, lovely film festival, amazing. Thank you so much for having our short. I'm so honored.

    November 2025
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  • Owen Thomas

    Great communication from the team

    November 2025
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  • David Hutchison

    Wonderful to have the first episode of my animation series screened at SQIFF. Great communication too. A bonus to getting a screening fee. Recommended.

    November 2025
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  • Ana Berdeja

    The team behind SQIFF were amazing from the start. Attentive and incresdibly passionate about the work they do and the films they promote. I am honoured to have been part of it and recommend anyone considering to attend or submit their films to do so. Thank you, SQIFF!!!

    November 2025
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