Share your brand with the most diverse community in the world with activation opportunities that can be customized for you!
Queens World Film Initiative, Inc.
Queens World Film Initiative is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that creates opportunities for communities to experience global storytelling. For 16 years, Queens World has advanced independent film through public screening events, immersive professional development experiences, and a community story telling initiative, The Listening Tour. This year-round programming supports filmmakers and engages the public in initiatives that provide opportunities for mentorship, skill-building, and creative exchanges across disciplines.
Queens World Presser with 2025 Spirit of Queens Honoree Warrington Hudlin and Queens Borough President Donovan Richards
The Queens World Film Festival, is a multi-day, multi-venue event featuring thematic blocs of independent films from around the world and around the corner. The dynamic programming is designed to spark dialogue, reflection, and audience engagement around urgent social, cultural, and artistic topics. For example, these blocs were featured in our most recent festival November 5 -16, 2025.
Tough as Nails: 7 Films that remind us she is more than a manicure
This block inspired cheers, tears, and deep reflection, sharing stories of women navigating homelessness, traumatic birth experiences, and sexual assault with resilience and strength.
Queer Pioneers: 2 Films about Leadership and Pride
A sold-out screening featuring a feature-length documentary about the founders of Astoria Pride alongside a short doc about a Black queer trans activist working to keep her community safe.
Environmentally Speaking: 8 Films about the world we live in
This bloc showcased a wide range of filmmakers, from 80-year-old environmental activists to high school students documenting community gardens and public spaces in Queens.
Borderless: 5 Films exploring the meaning of home
A screening examining immigrant experiences across the globe, from New York to North Korea.
Queens World leans into filmmaker access and audience engagement with pre-festival community building events like the popular Pot-Luck-Kick-Off Party, The Presser and the Trailer Party that all serve to connect filmmakers to each other and our supporters before the festival begins. These efforts have gained the notice of community and industry leaders alike.
Encore Screenings & Special Events
Queens World extends its reach beyond the annual festival through Encore Screenings of festival films, pop-up film centric events, Listening Tour screenings and more. Our Encore Screenings bring selected short films and feature presentations to a variety of venues across Queens and partner communities. These screenings allow audiences who might not attend the festival to experience independent films, while continuing to support filmmakers through exposure and professional recognition.
In addition, Queens World hosts Networking Events and special programming tailored to specific audiences and industry topics. Examples include “How To Fest”, a workshop for early career filmmakers focused on strategies for being an excellent Film Festival participant; “A Juneteenth Panel” focusing on filmmakers of color maintaining their cultural and creative sovereignty in an Eurocentric film industry; Through Her Lens brought women from across the Industry to discuss gender and pay equity. These events create opportunities for mentorship, conversation, and visibility while providing our Festival Associates with valuable event production experience.
The Listening Tour Expansion Program
What began on September 11, 2021, as a pandemic activity for neighborhood youth has grown into a living archive of community voice with over 200 interviews archived at the Queens Memory Project at the Queens Library. These stories of our resilient and hopeful community also live on Youtube and have racked up over 23,000 combined views. Festival Associates have interviewed the Queens Public LIbrary facilities staff, mental health patients, youth workers, community activists, kitchen crews, Army reservists, an entire 5th grade Inclusion class, and others who might not usually be included in these kinds of community archive projects. Our message is clear: We are listening.
Tiffany Joyce – 2021
Martha – 2022
Neha – 2023
Eve – 2024
Quincey and his Dad – 2025
With the expansion of the Listening Tour, Queens World plans to increase its reach into communities in underserved Council Districts including Rockaway, Bayside, Hollis, Freshmeadows, Rego Park, and Ridgewood. Further, we intend to include more people with disabilities and will record more of these personal reflections in languages other than English to better represent the diversity of ‘The World’s Borough’ and so that future generations can better understand our resilience during challenging times.
Festival Associate Training
Some organizations call them interns, we credit them as Festival Associates and they come from wildly diverse backgrounds. 91% of them have been first generation college students and first generation artists. Our Festival Associates come to us through partnerships with ReelWorksMedia and multiple colleges in the CUNY system. When they start their residency with Queens World, they are given a spot on our website and they must produce a Listening Tour. As we move through that experience together, we learn a great deal about them which helps us develop an action plan for their time at Queens World that will help them acquire transferable skills. Their experience at Queens World is equal parts film production, arts management, and administration duties providing training in asset management, promotions, marketing, event planning and delivery. Festival Associates work with Executive Director Katha Cato to map out their residency.
Ladders For Leaders 2024
Ladders For Leaders & ReelWorks MediaMkrs 2025-2026
Festival Associates, Opening Night 2025
The Filmmaker’s Bootcamp
Queens World offers immersive Filmmaking Bootcamps to teach filmmaking techniques, from concept development and scriptwriting to cinematography, sound, and post-production. The bootcamps prioritize accessibility, welcoming participants from diverse backgrounds and varying levels of experience.
These bootcamps intentionally enter spaces where participants might not otherwise have the opportunity to experience filmmaking. For example, after a Listening Tour experience at The Fortune Society in 2024, we were invited back to provide a Bootcamp for their members in 2025. This provided new opportunities for their members and for our Festival Associates, creating spaces where participants who would never have been in the same room could collaborate and learn from one another. We have included a 3 minute trailer for the 16 minute finished film, The Art of Freedom.
Industry Table Labs
Our Industry Table Labs transform professional development into active, relationship-driven experiences with attendees seated at tables with a dedicated Table Catalyst, an accomplished industry professional who guides conversation, shares insight, and opens pathways into the field. With voices ranging from directors and producers to entertainment attorneys, programmers, and city agency leaders, each table becomes a dynamic hub of knowledge and access. The room is alive with the kind of exchange that turns information into opportunity.
Passion in Action
Queens World by the Numbers
In 2025, QWFF welcomed over 2,500 guests, with 68% coming from outside the borough and 54% spending more than an hour in Queens after screenings, spending $50 or more in the the neighborhoods surrounding our venues. The festival season garnered more than 36,000,000 media impressions through partnerships with MOME, NYC Tourism Foundation, LinksNYC, Schneps Media, and Queens Chronicle, amplifying the visibility of independent filmmakers and their work worldwide.
Queens World actively promotes equity and representation. Films submitted by women filmmakers grew by 15% this year, representing 37% of all submissions, and 43% of films screened were by women. Not parity but progress. Our programming also highlights global perspectives, with submissions and screenings from 113 countries. Since its inception, Queens World has presented over 2,109 films, creating a sustained platform for diverse storytelling.
Partners and Supporters
Queens World Film Festival is built on a robust network of partners spanning industry leaders, cultural institutions, and community based organizations. Key collaborators include Museum of the Moving Image, Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, New York Women in Film & Television, and Kaufman Astoria Studios, which anchor our festival screenings. These relationships and representatives from these organizations on our Jury, screening committee, and panels ensure industry relevance.
Equally vital are our deep ties to community and cultural partners including the Queens Borough President’s Office, Queens Rising, Queens Economic Development Corporation, Flushing Town Hall, Reel Works, MediaMkrs, Stuart Cinema & Cafe, The Fortune Society, LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, NYCity Council Member Shekar Krishnan, and CUNY schools in all 5 boroughs. These relationships ensure that we root our events and activities in the Queens community while welcoming audiences from across the city and beyond. As we expand our services to other boroughs, our roots remain strong and part of the arts and culture ecosystem that is flourishing in Queens.
What People Are Saying
“It’s really a wonderful festival, with so many young people.”
Leon Ochaso – Filmmaker – Spirit of Queens Honoree 2015
El Super, Bitter Sugar, Miami Heat
“I love being invited to join the august company of honorees Melvin Van Peebles, Susan Seidelman, Leon Ichaso, Nancy Kelly and Jan Oxenberg, indie directors whom I deeply admire. It’s a thrill to receive this award from two iconoclasts who embody the “Spirit of Queens” themselves: Preston & Katha Cato. They showcase significant films, often those created far from the centers of political and economic power.”
Sandra Schulberg, Pres and Founder IndieCollect, QWFF Board Member, Spirit of Queens Honoree 2022
Quills, Filmmakers for the Prosecution
“The Queens World Film Festival has changed the cultural landscape of Queens, I think for the better.”
Carl Goodman
Former Executive Director
Museum of the Moving Image
“Queens World helped me find my voice. This film is me using it—unapologetically.”
Andrea Ocampo, Filmmaker, Alumni: 2025
“I’m proud to be from Queens and to be part of the indie film movement that is thriving in the borough, in part thanks to the work they are doing with QWFF.”
Adam Schartoff
Programmer & Host of Filmwax Radio
“I haven’t had so much fun at a film event in years and I love what you folks are doing on many levels. Awesome, awesome, awesome!”
AKahlil Garner Assistant Professor,
Department of Communication, Theatre, & Media Production
CUNY Queensborough Community College
“It’s a festival led with passion and rigor, thoughtfully designed to connect and reconnect you to other indie filmmakers so you can develop and grow your community.”
Anna Sang Park, Filmmaker, Alumni, and Assistant Professor, Film Production, Hunter College
Beyond the festival, Queens World provides year round opportunities for engagement with our audiences.
- Passion in Action (More Info)
- The Listening Tour (More Info)
- Encore Screenings (More Info)
- Young Filmmakers Program (More Info)
- Spirit of Queens Honorees (More Info)
Queens World Film Initiative, Inc. programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and by New York City Council Member Shekar Krishnan and the Department of Youth and Community Development.
Are You a Friend of the Festival?
Since our opening, we have screened 2,109 films from 98 nations including 36 films by NYC School Children. Help us bring the world to Queens and Queens to the world!
