Frameline and The Colin Higgins Foundation Award $45,000 to Emerging LGBTQ+ Filmmakers with 2026 Colin Higgins Youth Filmmaker Grants

This year’s grantees, whose works will screen at Frameline50, include franny trinidad and

Kelly Liu for Babaylan, Edward Nguyen for Sweat (Mồ Hôi), and Matthew Sorgie for So Be It

From L to R: A still from Sweat (Mồ Hôi); a still from So Be It; and a still from Babaylan.

By Oliver Carnay

Frameline, the arts nonprofit that hosts the San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival, joined the Colin Higgins Foundation in announcing the recipients of the 2026 Colin Higgins Youth Filmmaker Grant. The partnership, which began in 2023, centers on providing young LGBTQ+ filmmakers with financial support to continue their work. Eligible applicants must self-identify as LGBTQ+ filmmakers, be 25 years of age or younger, and currently reside in the U.S. The 2026 winners are franny trinidad and Kelly Liu for Babaylan, Edward Nguyen for Sweat (Mồ Hôi) and Matthew Sorgie for So Be It.

“This year’s Colin Higgins Youth Filmmaker Grantees and their exceptional films are a reminder that queer cinema needs all of our voices, all of our stories, to keep building a more empathetic, rounded world,” said Allegra Madsen, Executive Director of Frameline. “These filmmakers’ willingness to put queer truths on screen is crucial to expanding what queer storytelling can look like, sound like, and mean.”

This year, three films by LGBTQ+ youth filmmakers have been selected as the recipients of the Colin Higgins Youth Filmmaker Grant, and each film team will receive $15,000 to support their future film projects. In addition to awarding a total of $45,000 to these emerging filmmakers, Frameline will screen the grant recipients’ films during various shorts blocks at the landmark 50th San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival (Frameline50), which takes place June 17–27, and host a filmmaker from each team for the Festival’s run.

“We are deeply honored and could not be more proud to be partnered with Frameline in handing out these youth filmmaker grants in Colin’s name,” said James Cass Rogers, President of the Colin Higgins Foundation. “Colin was a consummate filmmaker who wanted to help gay youth succeed. These grants are a perfect fit for his foundation. His memory will live on through these extraordinary young filmmakers.”

The Colin Higgins Youth Filmmaker Grant is named after the late Colin Higgins, an acclaimed screenwriter and director responsible for such classic films as Harold and Maude, 9 to 5, and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, among others. After being diagnosed with HIV in 1985, he founded the Colin Higgins Foundation as a means of supporting LGBTQ+ youth in underserved communities by helping to fund programs and organizations that foster and build their leadership skills and empowerment. Since 1988, the Foundation has awarded over 660 grants worth over $6 million to further the humanitarian vision of its founder.

Previous recipients of the Colin Higgins Youth Filmmaker Grant include 2023 grantees Karina Dandashi for Cousins; Daisy Friedman for As You Are, Emilio Subía for Ñaños; 2024 grantees Farah Jabir for Kasbi and Leaf Lieber for Burrow; and 2025 grantees AJ Dubler and Carmela Murphy for A Bird Hit My Window and Now I’m a Lesbian and Remi Gabriel for Barbie Boy.

The Frameline50 program will be announced on May 13, 2026. Tickets for all programs, including the shorts blocks featuring the above Colin Higgins Youth Filmmaker Grantees’ works, will also go on sale at this time.

2026 COLIN HIGGINS YOUTH FILMMAKER GRANT RECIPIENTS

Babaylan

DIR Franny Trinidad & Kelly Liu 2025 USA/China 13 min

In this short, Bay Area Filipino drag queens blend ballroom and pre-colonial Babaylan spirituality as a reclamation and celebration of queer Filipino identity.

franny trinidad is a documentary filmmaker and multimedia journalist based in California’s Bay Area and Central Coast. She is currently in her first year as a documentary student at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and holds a B.A. in Film and Digital Media from UC Santa Cruz. Her passion for storytelling is rooted in a love for human connection, a commitment to social justice, and an understanding of cinema as a tool for liberation and political action.

Kelly Liu is a first-year news documentary filmmaking student at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She holds a degree from New York University, where she double-majored in Broadcast Journalism and International Relations. Passionate about visual storytelling, Liu focuses on pressing issues such as climate change, social justice, and human rights, with a particular commitment to amplifying the voices of marginalized communities. Through her work, she aims to shed light on underreported stories and drive meaningful conversations for change.

So Be It

DIR Matthew Sorgie 2025 USA 7 min

An animated documentary that offers a rare and tender portrait of lifelong queer love by sharing the candid, heartfelt stories of five LGBTQIA+ couples.

Matthew Sorgie is a director based in Los Angeles whose work explores the intersection of nonfiction and animation. A graduate of the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts with a BFA in Animation and Digital Arts, Matthew is committed to using animation as a tool to breathe life into untold narratives. His work centers marginalized voices through mission-driven storytelling that aims to both entertain and empower. While at USC, he received the Discovery Scholar Prize and the SCA Impact Award for his contributions to socially engaged filmmaking.

Sweat (Mồ Hôi)

DIR Edward Nguyen 2026 USA/Vietnam 15 min

A farm worker prepares to illegally cross the border of rural Vietnam in search of refuge abroad in this ethereal drama that premiered at BFI Flare.

Edward Nguyen is a Vietnamese-American writer-director based between New York and Austin. A recent graduate of Yale University, Edward centers the intersection of the Vietnamese/diasporic experience and queerness through kink, the folkloric and the surreal. Inspired by Southeast Asian and slow cinema auteurs, his works trouble the surface of what we consider fixed, such as national trauma and memory, challenging us to deny one-dimensional narratives of queerness in contemporary Vietnam. He is a part of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s How We Heal Short Films Lab and of the 2026–2027 UFO Short Film Lab cohort. His first short film Mồ Hôi (Sweat) had its premiere at BFI Flare.

The Colin Higgins Foundation is dedicated to supporting LGBTQ+ youth and the organizations that help them to flourish and grow. Since 1988, the Foundation has awarded over 660 grants worth over $6 million. In addition to recognizing the exemplary achievements of individual youth through the Colin Higgins Youth Courage Awards for over two decades, the Foundation has also supported the work of numerous organizations such as The Trevor Project, the Lesbian and Gay Immigration Rights Task Force, the Japanese-American Citizens League, the Audre Lorde Project, FAMILIA: Trans Queer Liberation Movement, and more. Now we are honored to be in partnership with the Frameline, the San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival, to award the Colin Higgins Youth Filmmaker grants to outstanding young filmmakers 25 years of age and younger.

For more information on the Colin Higgins Foundation, visit www.colinhiggins.org.