Fans of the Easter Sunday Hunky Jesus Contest will go cross-eyed to see that there’s a new feature-length documentary Hunky Jesus hitting the film festival circuit, and you’ll be absolutely nailed by the trailer.
It is now early March, and Easter Sunday this year falls on the fairly early date of April 6, which means you only have 32 shopping days left until this years Hunky Jesus Contest in Dolores Park, of course put on by (and celebrating the anniversary of the Sister of Perpetual Indulgence). But there is even bigger news, as we see through the announcement of some film festival happening 5,000 miles that Holy Christ, there’s a new feature-length documentary about the Hunky Jesus Contest coming out!
It's simply called Hunky Jesus, and the trailer for it is seen above. It’s playing as the opening night film at the BFI Flare London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival, so yeah, you would have to go all the way to London to see it on its screening dates that are in two weeks.
But film festival season is just around the corner here in SF, and it’s an extremely good bet this film will be on the schedule for one of this spring or summer’s film festivals right here in San Francisco.
According to the official BFI Flare blurb for Hunky Jesus, “This riotous documentary shows the drag nuns battling at the coal face against a religious conservatism increasingly hell-bent on eroding human rights. It interweaves the 2023 annual free festival for the queer community, featuring reincarnations of The Cockettes and a variety of blasphemous cabaret for a cause, with chronicles of the Sisters’ history on the front line of the AIDS crisis, alongside some of their biggest direct actions, like 1987’s exorcism of Pope John Paul II.”
As seen in the trailer, the film interviews Sister Roma and founding sister Grand Mother Vish-Knew. Apparently George S. Takei is also interviewed in this documentary.
The film looks beautifully shot from the trailer, and it's directed by Jennifer M. Kroot. Kroot attended the SF Art Institute (RIP, kinda), and also directed the George Takei documentary To Be Takei (2014) and The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin (2017).
Again, the Hunky Jesus documentary is not currently scheduled to play in SF, is only at the BFL Flare film festival in London, and has no streaming options. But the SFFILM festival and Frameline have yet to announce their 2026 lineups. So come on SFFILM festival and Frameline, you’ve gotta give us the Hunky Jesus documentary this year!
Image: BFL Flare via Youtube
