The SHOUT Gay & Lesbian Film Festival returns to Birmingham Saturday and Sunday, August 25-26, when it shares dates and a festival footprint downtown with the Sidewalk Film Festival.

Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker, both with Oscar wins to their credit, are the stars of Cloudburst, a film that SHOUT Gay & Lesbian Film Festival will show in a pre-fest screening August 22 at the Bottletree Cafe.

SHOUT, which is Alabama’s first and only gay & lesbian film festival, will feature 12 features and a shorts block.

However, if you just can’t wait that long to consume some of the compelling filmed content that SHOUT offers, you’ll have a couple of chances to see SHOUT films early.

SHOUT will screen the narrative feature, Sassy Pants, at The Edge 12 Theatre in Crestwood, Tuesday, August 21, at 7:15 p.m.

On Wednesday, August 22, at The Bottletree Café, SHOUT will screen another narrative feature, the eagerly anticipated Cloudburst, beginning at 8 p.m.

Sassy Pants (88 minutes), written and directed by Coley Sohn, stars Ashley Rickards (One Tree Hill) as a young woman named Bethany who is having a hard time coming into her own, thanks in part to her bitchy, oppressive mom (Anna Gunn, Breaking Bad).

Mom, you see, has managed all of Bethany’s homeschooling and wants her to get an accounting degree from an online university. After mom catches her with a neighbor boy and, like, freaks,  Bethany runs away to live with her father, Dale (Diedrich Bader, The Drew Carey Show) and his (much younger) boyfriend, Chip (Haley Joel Osment, The Sixth Sense, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence). The film also stars Jenny O’Hara (Big Love).

Haley Joe Osment plays a young gay man in the indie film Sassy Pants, to be shown by the SHOUT Gay & Lesbian Film Fesitval in an early screening on August 21 at The Edge 12 in Crestwood

According to the SHOUT web site, Sassy Pants is a coming-of-age story for anyone who has ever felt different or oppressed (that’s everybody, right?).

Sassy Pants is Sohn’s first film and, we’re told, demonstrates her ability to extract poignant bits of realism from comic situations.

Admission to Sassy Pants is $6. You can check out the film’s trailer on YouTube.

Cloudburst (105 minutes), directed by Thom Fitzgerald, tells a relatively simple story: A  lesbian couple escape from their nursing home (You go, girls!) and run away to Canada to get married, picking up a young, male hitchhiker along the way.

According to the SHOUT web site, Academy Award-winning actresses Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker bring richness and complexity brought to the characters of Stella and Dot, respectively. The film co-stars Ryan Doucette.

Cloudburst has been a hit so far on the film-fest circuit, winning over a dozen awards and counting and being picked as the opening night film in several festivals.

Admission is $10. Learn more about the movie at www.cloudburstmovie.com. You can watch the film’s trailer at YouTube.

SHOUT began in 2006 and showcases features, documentaries and short films by new and established artists and offers attendees the opportunity to view topics of interest to the GLBT communities, as well as to interact with filmmakers and documentary subjects in attendance.

Learn more – and check out the complete festival schedule – at http://bhamshout.com.

Check out the complete Sidewalk schedule at http://sidewalkfest.com.

Jesse Chambers is managing editor of Weld. Send your feedback to editor@weldbham.com.