Queer Screen Film Fest announces its 2026 winners

The 13th Queer Screen Film Fest has crowned its winners, with Test, Floodcam and Jim Queen taking home the festival’s major prizes.

Queer Screen Film Fest was held in Sydney earlier this month, with a week full of LGBTQIA+ stories lighting up the screens at Event Cinemas George Street.

It hosted 28 documentaries, feature films and shorts from across the world, all shot with a queer lens. And now we have the official winners.

Test takes home Emerging Narrative Feature

Test has taken out the Emerging Narrative Feature Competition, earning director Sam McConnell a $2,500 AUD cash prize.

The film was judged by Sydney writer and director Craig Boreham (Teenage Kicks, Lonesome), Australian writer and director Alice Maio Mackay (The Serpent’s Skin, Our Effed Up World), and Ing Deickman, head of programming at Golden Age Cinema and founder of Pink Flamingo Cinema.

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The jury was clearly smitten with Test, describing it as “a well-realised and authentically told character study with a distinct point of view”.

“We haven’t seen another film quite like Test,” they added. The film explores ambition, faith and queer awakening.

It follows Eddie (Brock Yurich, Succession), a small-town bodybuilder determined to earn his professional bodybuilding card.

But between an expensive training regimen, a demanding mother who also happens to be his coach, and secretly working as a webcam model to fund his ambitions, Eddie has plenty on his plate.

Floodcam scores Pitch-Off prize

Written, directed and produced by Sam Carson, Floodcam picked up a very handy $10,000 AUD cash prize, plus $5,000 AUD worth of Spectrum Films post-production services.

Carson pitched the project to a jury featuring AWGIE Award-winning Korean Australian writer and director Andrew Undi Lee, SBS Scripted Development Executive Zaina Ahmed, and Dr Pearl Tan, multidisciplinary creator and AFTRS Directing Lead.

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The jury praised Carson’s “ambitious vision” and “unique, bold, and assured creative voice”. They also saw serious potential for Floodcam to make its mark on Australian queer cinema.

Set in the Australian subtropics, Floodcam follows a “tranny chaser” who cons his way into funding the vaginoplasty of a trans woman he has never met.

All whilst a flood is on the way to potentially take out the entire region.