Wicked Queer 41 Jury and Audience Winners

Jury Winners: Narrative

Winner: Sandbag Dam

The jury is thrilled to award Best Narrative to Čejen Černić Čanak’s Sandbag Dam for its subtle yet powerful depiction of forbidden love in a village grappling with swollen rivers and declining population of young people. Slaven’s departure and Marko’s temptation to leave are emblematic of more than just desires for urban life. It’s a necessity for them to be authentically themselves and for them to be with each other. The cast performances are finely tuned throughout and coupled with the film's muted visual style deepen the sense of emotional intimacy. Sandbag Dam is as much about what is unsaid as what is spoken—a powerful allegory for the futility of societal dams to contain the flood within.

Honorable Mention: Rains Over Babel

We would feel remiss if we failed to mention another standout in this year’s festival competition. For its artistic vision and bold imagery, an honorable mention goes to Rains Over Babel. Director Gala del Sol creates a fabulous queer universe that is at once daring, provocative, and completely mesmerizing. We are drawn to the color before us, and get entangled in the fragments of story and sound. Dazzled with a constellation of characters whose performances were as dangerous as they were alluring, Rains Over Babel is a vivid celebration that is perfectly delivered on screen.

Jury Winners: Documentary

Winner: Assembly

Assembly follows the production of Rashaad Newsome’s 2022 multimedia commission of the same name at a historic military hall in NYC. It is impossible to not feel drawn in by this introduction and homage to ballroom culture, as you get to know and admire its beautifully diverse cast of artists, musicians and dancers. This work may challenge assumptions you hold about AI. Using poetry, vogue dancing, AI, hip-hop and traditional artistic mediums, Assembly invites you to decolonize your mind, body and soul. 

Honorable Mention: Row of Life

Row of Life is a beautiful film and deserves an honorable mention. It depicts inspiring Queer love, and examines the fighting nature of the human spirit when attempting to overcome great obstacles. It succeeds as a sports film, but also as a meditation on the unexpected turns that life throws at us, and how we handle them. The type of film that gets under the skin and is thought about days later, Row of Life is impressive and affecting.

Audience Award Winners: Narrative

Winner: Outerlands

Elena Oxman’s Outerlands struck a deep emotional chord with audiences, earning this year’s Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature. Centering on Cass (they/them), a nonbinary San Francisco hustler navigating gigs and survival, the film beautifully captures the quiet intimacy that forms between Cass and 11-year-old Ari after an unexpected caretaking arrangement. With a raw, tender performance and a sharp sense of place, Outerlands is a powerful meditation on identity, resilience, and the families we make along the way.

Honorable Mention: The Wedding Banquet

Audiences fell for Andrew Ahn’s heartfelt and hilarious exploration of queer relationships, cultural expectations, and chosen family in The Wedding Banquet. When Min proposes a green-card marriage to his friend Angela in exchange for IVF support, things take a wild turn with the surprise arrival of his grandmother—and an unexpected, full-blown Korean wedding banquet. With sharp writing, vibrant performances, and a warm sense of humor, The Wedding Banquet resonated as a refreshingly complex love story in all its forms.

Audience Award Winners: Documentary

Winner: A Culinary Uprising: The Story of Blood Root

Directed by Annie Laurie Medonis, A Culinary Uprising: The Story of Bloodroot resonated deeply with festival audiences, earning this year’s Audience Award for Best Documentary. The film offers an intimate portrait of Bloodroot—the longest-running feminist restaurant in North America—and its visionary founders, Selma Miriam and Noel Furie. Through Medonis’s thoughtful lens, the documentary honors over four decades of feminist queer resistance.

Honorable Mention: Assembly

The audience was captivated by Rashaad Newsome’s Afro-futurist vision, awarding this year's honorable mention to a film that redefines what a documentary can be. Set against the backdrop of a repurposed military site in New York City, the film brings together a powerful cast of global artists, vogue performers, and AI collaborators to imagine a liberated, decolonized future.

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