We are now accepting submissions for the 33rd Annual Tampa Bay International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival (TIGLFF) taking place October 7-16.
TIGLFF is the oldest LGBTQ+ film festival in Florida and one of the oldest in the country.
Opening Night will be at the historic Tampa Theatre. This year's edition will be both in-person and virtual with the goal of all selected films being made available at a physical venue and through streaming. Films will be screened at venues in Tampa and St. Petersburg and encompass the whole Tampa Bay area. The streaming platform will be Eventive.
The mission of the Festival is to showcase a selection of compelling film by, for, or about the LGBTQ+ community that Entertains, Empowers, and Enlightens the festival audience, as well as establishing a sense of community between the audience, filmmakers, and talent.
TIGLFF was the most recent winner of the 2020 Creative Loafing Reader's poll Best of the Bay Film Festival
TIGLFF was also named as a "Top 25" public event by the Tampa Bay Business Journal.
Friends of the Festival, Inc. (FOF) is a non-profit (501c3) organization that produces the Tampa Bay International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, which began in 1990 through the outreach of several local community based organizations. The first Film Festival was created as a fundraiser under the name Pride Film Festival, followed by Suncoast Film Festival. Then in the late 1990’s became known as the Tampa International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival (TIGLFF).
Since 1989, TIGLFF has showcased thousands of films for the LGBT community of Tampa Bay. Located primarily at the historic Tampa Theatre on Franklin St., TIGLFF has helped usher in a renaissance of Tampa's downtown.
In 2005 FOF began expanding content to include a year-round film series with screenings in both Tampa and St. Petersburg FL. Since 2015, the festival has committed to making its programming easily accessible to all of the communities that make up the entire Tampa Bay area.
In 2020 we created or annual virtual Trans Film Festival in November for Transgender Day of Remembrance and now moved to March for the Transgender Day of Visibility, and in 2021 created our annual Queer In Color Film Festival aimed at the BIPOC Community.
The Friends of the Festival Fund was established in 2009 through the estate of Alan Ira Dusowitz. This endowment trust helps fund film programming content for TIGLFF. In honor of Alan, TIGLFF will give annual cash awards for Best Emerging Filmmaker in the categories of Full Length Feature Film and Short Film.
In addition, we give nominal Audience and Jury Awards in the categories of Narrative Feature, Documentary Feature and Short Film.
