We are no longer accepting submissions for the 35th Annual Tampa Bay International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival (TIGLFF) taking place in St. Petersburg at GreenLight Cinema in January-February 2025.

ST. PETE Dates - January 30th - February 2nd, 2025

TIGLFF is the oldest LGBTQ+ film festival in Florida and one of the oldest in the country. Films will be screened in-person at venues in Tampa and St. Petersburg and encompass the whole Tampa Bay area.

The mission of the Festival is to showcase a selection of compelling films by, for, or about the LGBTQ+ community that Entertains, Empowers, and Enlightens the festival audience, as well as establish a sense of community between the audience, filmmakers, and talent.

For 2025, TIGLFF is returning to a smaller festival model with a focus on re-centering with local community partnerships and grassroots community building.

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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 serving our BIPOC communities.

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.

Film Submission Requirements

1. Films should be of interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual, intersex and/or transgender people. We are seeking narrative, documentary, experimental and animated films and videos (both features and shorts) on DCP, digital download, hard drive, 35mm and BluRay or DVD if necessary.

2. Vimeo links are preferred for preview screeners.

3. Each submission should be entered separately on FilmFreeway. If you are submitting more than one entry, please complete a separate entry for each submission.
Film Submission Requirements

4. Rough cuts and works-in-progress are eligible for submission if an exhibition copy will be available by December 1st, 2024. Please identify the screener as a “Rough Cut” and specify what is missing (i.e. temp sound, needs color correction, etc). Please be aware that an updated version of your rough cut MAY NOT be able to be re-screened for submission consideration.

5. By submitting your work to TIGLFF, you grant to Friends of the Festival, Inc. a nonexclusive license to use an excerpt of your submission tape of up to two minutes in length, for promotional purposes only, including but not limited to internet and television broadcast.

6. Still photos of your work are requested with your submission and are required for all films selected for the festival. Good stills make a difference in film placement and press coverage, particularly for shorts. Even the shortest short can get press coverage or festival prominence with a captivating still image. If you email stills to us they must be in JPEG format and hi-resolution (at least 300 dpi).

7. You are also encouraged to enclose a synopsis, production credits and press information regarding your film.

Overall Rating
Quality
Value
Communication
Hospitality
Networking
  • Michele Noble

    Congrats on your 35 years!! Great Festival! Very welcoming to filmmakers & audiences! Wonderful communication! Terrific in every way! Highly recommend! Our film, The Yellow Sponge is the Dish Sponge had a Sold Out screening! Amazing block of films! Thank you Tampa Bay International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival! Thank you Renee and everyone who made this fantastic festival happen!! ❤️😘

    February 2025
  • Jason Kluytman

    Honored to be a part of this amazing event! Thank you for including our film.

    February 2025
  • Dariush Jafari

    Many congratulations to the Tampa Bay International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, who love their festival and continue on their path regardless of the obstacles that have arisen. It was a great pleasure and happiness to be present at your festival. I hope you continue on your path with strength as you have begun.

    February 2025
  • Great selection! So glad 'Trans_CCS' was part of this amazing curation!

    January 2023
  • Liam O'Connor-Genereaux

    We had our world premiere here for The Butterfly Queen. The Programming Director was really excited, lots of positive communication. Myself and our producer/art director flew to FL for the fest (TIGLFF couldn't reimburse travel or lodging). The theater was massive, amazing to play on such a large screen, but the festival was very poorly attended (the films we saw had 6-15 attendees). That low turnout is sort of just 2022 for you, but what really was off was that the festival organizers did not seem to try to include us as filmmakers in the festival. We had no scheduled Q&A, no introductions at the closing party, and no opportunity to network with other filmmakers. Overall a pretty underwhelming experience. Awesome lineup of films, but not a good experience for filmmakers.

    December 2022