One of New England’s most established and adventurous film festivals unspools each fall in the Granite State. The 24th annual New Hampshire Film Festival (NHFF), which takes place Oct. 15–18 at the historic Music Hall theater in the seacoast town of Portsmouth, includes several notable LGBTQ+ features.
One of the much-anticipated films in the festival is an intimate and powerful documentary about a New Hampshire family. “Adam’s Apple,” which premiered at this year’s SXSW and was then featured in both the Provincetown International Film Festival and the Independent Film Festival Boston, is a tender exploration of identity as seen through the dual perspectives of Adam, a transgender teen, and his mother, visual artist Amy Jenkins who directed the film.
Jenkins’ first documentary feature, “Instructions on Parting,” premiered at MoMA Doc Fortnight 2018. “Adam’s Apple” grew from Jenkins’ 2019 short film “Wishes” which screened widely in festivals including Boston’s Wicked Queer and the Camden International Film Festival .
“Adam’s Apple” is a visually poetic and engaging look at family bonds, acceptance and letting go as it charts Adam’s transition journey and his family’s evolution. Jenkins deftly weaves past and present, using footage from her own archive of home videos along with Adam’s iPhone, as the film chronicles Adam’s childhood and the last eight years of his transition. Mother and son shoot the documentary together, shifting between both points of view, as they examine with sensitivity, humor and joy the ultimately universal themes of coming into adulthood.
Movies about older women, particularly queer women, are rare in mainstream cinema, so it’s remarkable that writer-director Sal Bardo’s debut indie feature “Out of the Woods” even managed to get made. Veteran film and television actress Frances Fisher (“Unforgiven,” “Titanic”) stars as Max, a woman who is slowly losing her memory. Her past resurfaces when an old friend, Diana (Mimi Kennedy), shows up and reawakens Max’s long-buried feelings. She’s forced to choose, according to the film’s description, “between spending the precious time she has left with the woman she’s always loved or remaining faithful to her husband, Charlie.”
Charlie is played by Bruce Davison, whose long list of stage and screen credits includes his acclaimed performance as a gay man whose lover is dying of AIDS in the landmark 1989 drama “Longtime Companion.” At a time when many mainstream actors avoided gay roles, Davison earned a best supporting actor Oscar nomination and won a Golden Globe and an Independent Spirit Award for his performance.
“Out of the Woods” had its world premiere at Toronto’s Inside Out, one of the largest and longest-running LGBTQ+ film festivals in North America.
Brock Yurich wrote the autobiographical screenplay for director Sam McConnell’s directorial debut, “Test,” which screened in the Provincetown International Film Festival in June and most recently in the Rhode Island International Film Festival, among others. Yurich stars as Eddie Owens, a competitive bodybuilder from a small town in Ohio who yearns to escape the confines of his repressive community and his religious conservative mother (Tammy Blanchard) by competing as a bodybuilder. “Glee” star Matthew Morrison plays a local pastor.
As Eddie develops a secret romantic attachment to his new coach (Mike Edward), he struggles with his desire to live authentically while battling dependence on performance-enhancing drugs and the mounting pressures to conform to ideas about body image and masculine identity.
Yurich wrote on social media of the satisfaction in bringing his personal story to the screen. “Telling Eddie’s story though my screenplay ‘Test’ was all I could think about for the past 10 years. Making an independent film is a long painful process, but I knew the pain of giving up on it would be far greater,” Yurich wrote. “I am so thankful that I not only had the privilege of making such a deeply personal film with such a great team, but also to be able to share it at such prestigious film festivals.”
“Test” may be McConnell’s feature directing debut, but his impressive resume includes producing two acclaimed HBO documentaries exploring identity: “The Out List,” featuring Ellen DeGeneres, Larry Kramer, Cynthia Nixon and Neil Patrick Harris, and “The Trans List” featuring Laverne Cox and Janet Mock, both with director Timothy Greenfield-Sanders. He also directed the award-winning documentary feature “Camp RicStar” (2024) about a life-changing music therapy camp for kids with disabilities.
Besides its lineup of features, documentaries and post-screening discussions with guest filmmakers, the NHFF offers a robust shorts program. The NHFF was named a qualifying festival for the Short Film Awards by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences beginning with the festival’s 20th annual edition.
Also at this year’s event, longtime New Hampshire resident Amy Greene will be honored as the 2026 recipient of the Van McLeod Award. Greene is a stunt coordinator, stunt performer and feature film producer whose recent projects include A24’s “The Drama” and the Provincetown-set Anthony Bourdain biopic “Tony.” Her past projects include the Oscar-winning “The Holdovers,” “Sound of Metal,” “Knives Out” and other films that earned awards at the Sundance Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival and the Independent Spirit Awards.