Four LGBTQ+ filmmakers will each receive $25,000 and career development support as the 2026 recipients of the New Voices Filmmaker Grant, a partnership between NewFest and Netflix now in its fifth year. Georgia Krause, Star Amerasu, Deborah Devyn Chuang, and the duo AJ Dubler and Carmela Murphy were selected from more than 500 applicants, according to Deadline, which published the exclusive announcement on 30 July 2026.

NewFest — New York's largest presenter of LGBTQ+ film and media — launched the grant in 2022 to give emerging queer filmmakers funding, mentorship tailored to each recipient, and industry exposure. The four winners' work spans stop-motion animation, documentary, slapstick comedy, science fiction, and body genre, a broad stylistic range that reflects the scope of the applications pool.

A three-person jury chose the recipients: Silas Howard, director of By Hook or By Crook; River Gallo, writer and star of Ponyboi; and Merrill Sterritt, senior manager of partnerships and innovation and director of IF/Then Shorts at Field of Vision. Arno Mokros served as the grant coordinator. Lesli Klainberg, NewFest's Interim Executive Director, oversees the organisation, which describes its mission as giving voice and visibility to the full range of LGBTQ+ experiences through film.

The recipients' work will be presented at the New York LGBTQ+ Film Festival in October, now in its 37th edition. For a filmmaker coming out of the grant cycle, that festival screening is where the industry meets the work — a room of distributors, programmers, and producers, all watching.

The grant has built a track record over five years. Previous recipients include Terrance Daye, Drew de Pinto, Emily May Jampel, and LaQuan Lewis in 2023; Apa Agbayani, Angalis Field, Clementine Narcisse, and cai thomas in 2024; and MG Evangelista, Shuli Huang, Farah Jabir, and Kevin Xian Ming Yu in 2025. Past mentors attached to the programme include Andrew Ahn, Isabel Sandoval, Charlotte Wells, Chase Joynt, and Howard Gertler — filmmakers whose own careers have moved through the festival and distribution circuits the new recipients are now entering.

What makes the New Voices grant distinctive is its structure: each recipient gets individually arranged mentorship alongside the cash, rather than a one-size-fits-all programme. The $25,000 sits in the range where it can cover pre-production costs, equipment, or post-production work on a short or feature — money that matters most at the stage where projects stall for lack of it.

Applications for the 2026 cycle opened in January, per NewFest's Instagram. The October festival presentation will be the first public look at what these four filmmakers have been building.