LGBTQ+ Voices

LGBTQ+ Voices

You don’t have to go out of your way to celebrate the contributions that queer people have made to world cinema; film history is unavoidably, ineradicably, and undeniably queer. But those contributions haven’t always been out in the open, we’re spotlighting some of the most brazenly, brilliantly queer movies we can think of, with films from Todd Haynes, Derek Jarman, Yvonne Rainer, and other marvelous mavericks.

Subscribe Share
LGBTQ+ Voices
  • 4 Days in France

    Leaving December 1

    Directed by Jérôme Reybaud | 141 mins | 2016
    Parisian Pierre (Pascal Cervo) impulsively leaves his boyfriend Paul (Arthur Igual) behind and hits the backroads of rural France in Reybaud’s droll, sexy road movie for the dating-app age. Pierre makes his way between Grindr dates ...

  • A Bigger Splash

    Directed by Jack Hazan | 106 mins | 1973
    Jack Hazan’s intimate and innovative film about English-born, often California-based artist David Hockney and his work honors its subject through creative risk-taking. The improvisatory narrative-nonfiction hybrid features Hockney—a wary participant—as wel...

  • Funeral Parade of Roses

    Directed by Toshio Matsumoto | 105 mins | 1969
    Part of the storied output of Japan’s radical Art Theatre Guild, Matsumoto’s dazzling voyage through Tokyo’s Shinjuku neighborhood centers on two gender-nonconforming divas at “Bar Genet” but also doubles as a record of Japan’s avant-garde and subcul...

  • Peter von Kant

    Leaving December 1

    Directed by François Ozon | 85 mins | 2022
    Ozon's gender-flipped, gleefully bathetic homage to R.W. Fassbinder’s beloved lesbian melodrama "The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant", featuring Denis Ménochet as the titular Peter, a filmmaker, Khalil Gharbia as the young actor he fal...

  • So Pretty

    Leaving December 1

    Directed by Jessica Dunn Rovinelli | 83 mins | 2019
    Two young queer couples in New York City—transgender artist Tonia and her American academic boyfriend Franz; transwoman musician Erika and her political radical transmasculine partner Paul—find their daily lives gradually mer...

  • Stranger by the Lake

    Leaving December 1

    Directed by Alain Guiraudie | 100 mins | 2013
    Lauded and laureled at Cannes, Guiradie’s understated, simmeringly sensual thriller explores the proximity of Eros and Thanatos in an idyllic, lakeside nude beach/cruising spot—shot for maximum pastoral splendor by DP Claire Mathon...

  • The Queen

    Directed by Frank Simon | 68 mins | 1968
    Welcome to the 1967 Miss All-American Camp Beauty Pageant, held at New York’s Town Hall! Simon’s essential document of queer history takes us backstage to rehearsals and dressing rooms at a drag competition organized by Flawless Sabrina, and judged by a pa...

  • Totally F***ed Up

    Leaving December 1

    Directed by Gregg Araki | 79 mins | 1993
    The first film of Araki’s “Teenage Apocalypse” trilogy, which the director once described as a “cross between avant-garde experimental cinema and a queer John Hughes flick,” "Totally F***ed Up" focuses on six gay adolescents who, reject...

  • Tropical Malady

    Directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul | 114 mins | 2004
    Winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes, this is the movie that gained Apichatpong’s distinctive, dreamy vision a new level of recognition on the international stage. A bifurcated narrative, with no clear connection between the film’s two halves,...

  • Zero Patience

    Leaving December 1

    Directed by John Greyson | 101 mins | 1993
    Toronto New Wave fixture and queer activist Greyson’s wildly original work—part-protest film, part-comic musical fantasy—depicts the most unlikely romance between immortal Victorian explorer Sir Richard Burton (now employed at the Tor...

  • BloodSisters

    Leaving December 1

    Directed by Michelle Handelman | 69 mins | 1995
    A headlong plunge into the thriving “leatherdyke” BDSM community of ’90s San Francisco, Handelman’s film lets its eight subjects—all active participants in the leather scene—discuss private fantasy and public activism before the ...