Safflicks Pride Film Fest 2026: And the Winners Are…
What a Pride Month!
After a two-year festival hiatus, Safflicks Pride Film Fest returned this June with five brilliant independent short films, multiple screenings, audiences on both sides of the Atlantic and plenty of reasons to celebrate sapphic cinema.
Now that the final screening has finished and the audience votes have been counted, there is just one thing left to do: announce our Safflicks Pride Film Fest 2026 award winners.
Best Short: Playground
Winner: Playground
Our audiences have spoken, and Playground has been voted Best Short at Safflicks Pride Film Fest 2026.
Following Grace and Jas as their deliberately undefined relationship starts becoming rather more complicated, Playground captured something wonderfully familiar about modern queer relationships: the point where “keeping things casual” and what you actually feel about someone stop being quite the same thing.
Congratulations to the entire Playground team on being chosen by our audiences as their Best Short.
Most Watched: Trapped and Why We Pride
Joint Winners: Trapped and Why We Pride
One of the advantages of hosting our virtual festival on Lesflicks is that we can see what audiences actually choose to watch.
This year we had a tie.
Trapped and Why We Pride were our joint Most Watched films, based on views during the virtual festival on Lesflicks.
It is particularly lovely to see two very different films sharing this award.
While Trapped delivers fictional drama, tension and attraction, Why We Pride takes us into the real LGBTQ+ community through its documentary exploration of Southend Pride and the people who make local Pride possible.
Together, they are a reminder of the breadth of stories that belong within sapphic and LGBTQ+ cinema.
Jury Award: What Friends Are For
Winner: What Friends Are For
While many of our awards are decided by our audiences, we also wanted to recognise a film through our festival jury.
The Safflicks Pride Film Fest 2026 Jury Award goes to What Friends Are For.
Following queer bisexual Eden after a diagnosis of vaginismus while dating a cis man for the first time, the film explores intimacy, friendship and our assumptions about what sex and relationships are supposed to look like.
Bisexual experiences remain particularly underrepresented on screen, and What Friends Are For approaches its subject with humour, honesty and a refreshingly queer perspective.
Congratulations to everyone behind the film.
Best of Fest: Trapped
Winner: Trapped
Taking home our biggest audience award of the festival is Trapped, winner of Best of Fest.
Longtime neighbours Gina and Alexa find themselves stuck together in a stalled lift, where secrets, suppressed emotions and unexpected attraction gradually come to the surface.
The tension clearly connected with Safflicks audiences, with Trapped not only winning Best of Fest but also finishing the festival as one of our joint Most Watched films on Lesflicks.
Congratulations to the cast and crew of Trapped.
Five films, one very busy Pride Month
Of course, the awards are only one part of what made this year’s festival special.
We began the month by taking the Safflicks cinema back to LFEST: Back to Basecamp in Shrewsbury, reconnecting with the festival where our sapphic film programming has such a long history.
The programme then became available virtually through Lesflicks, allowing audiences to discover the films wherever they were watching from.
In London, we brought film into a different environment entirely with a special screening and networking event for LGBTQ+ Network Chairs and committee members, hosted by Universal Music Group UK and delivered in collaboration with British LGBT Awards, InvestingIN LGBTQ+ and InterMediaUK.
Then came an opportunity we hadn’t originally expected when we launched the festival.
Safflicks crossed the Atlantic.
Our Pride programme headed to The Black Cat in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, for Sapphic Cinema Night, combining the screening with a filmmaker Q&A and an opportunity for the audience, filmmakers and wider community to connect.
What began as our Pride Film Fest had become our first international Safflicks tour.
More opportunities for independent sapphic film
That journey is important.
There are brilliant lesbian, bisexual and sapphic films being made around the world. The challenge is often making sure the audiences who want those stories actually know they exist and have somewhere to watch them.
Film festivals can be an important part of that, but we want Safflicks to do more than put a film on a screen once and move on.
This year’s programme travelled between a lesbian arts festival, a corporate LGBTQ+ event, a specialist sapphic streaming platform and a community screening in Los Angeles. Each gave the filmmakers access to a slightly different audience and each gave audiences another opportunity to discover independent sapphic cinema.
It is a model we want to continue exploring.
And finally, thank you
A huge thank you to everyone who watched, voted, shared a post, attended a screening, joined a Q&A or simply told somebody else about one of the films.
Most importantly, thank you to the filmmakers who trusted us with their work.
Lez Be Honest. Playground. Trapped. What Friends Are For. Why We Pride.
Five very different films helped us celebrate the breadth of sapphic storytelling this Pride Month, and we have loved sharing them with audiences.
And congratulations once again to our 2026 award winners:
- Best Short: Playground
- Best of Fest: Trapped
- Jury Award: What Friends Are For
- Most Watched: Trapped and Why We Pride
Thank you to our partners
Safflicks is built around collaboration. We simply couldn’t create these opportunities for filmmakers and audiences without organisations willing to provide spaces, platforms, networks, expertise and support.
A huge thank you to everyone who partnered with us for Safflicks Pride Film Fest 2026, helped us take these films to new audiences and supported our ambition to make authentic sapphic stories more visible.
We really are #StrongerTogether.
Thank you to all of our Safflicks Pride Film Fest 2026 partners
The Pride Network at Universal Music Group UK is an employee-led community that champions LGBTQ+ inclusion, visibility, and equity across the company and the wider music industry. It brings together colleagues and allies to foster a culture where everyone can thrive, while supporting initiatives that amplify LGBTQ+ voices and talent. Through partnerships, events, and advocacy, The Pride Network helps drive meaningful change both within UMG and in the global communities it serves.
The network of pride networks…
InterMedia UK is an LGBTQ+ network group for people working across all areas of the media spectrum. This includes broadcasters, streamers, independent production companies, charities, advocacy groups, publishing, advertising and freelance staff across all areas.
Aiming to support a more LGBTQ+ inclusive media industry, InterMedia UK was originally formed in 2012 by Creative Skillset’s LGBT+ employee group and Stonewall. Now with over 25 companies on the Steering Committee, InterMedia UK aims to inspire and influence positive social change and celebrate diversity and equality in the media industry.
Lesflicks is a global streaming platform that hosts the worlds largest curated collection of authentic sapphic stories in the world. With a new title every week, Lesflicks is the go-to platform for lesbian and bisexual shorts, series and feature films.
A mini sapphic festival with brilliant acts, plenty of shared fun and lots of space to connect. The pace is relaxed, the atmosphere is warm; there’s no pressure to do everything.
InvestingIN LGBTQ+ is from the team behind the British LGBT Awards. Offering networking, support, training and guidance for UK organisations around LGBTQ+ inclusion.
