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.
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4 Days in France
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 and cruising destina... -
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... -
BloodSisters
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 camera, as well as l... -
Blue
Leaving October 1
Directed by Derek Jarman | 79 mins | 1993
Over an unceasing, monochromatic blue frame, voices read a poetic text in which Jarman muses on his physical and mental deterioration as well as the endless implications of the color blue. Jarman, dying of AIDS, would be gone within a y... -
Caravaggio
Leaving October 1
Directed by Derek Jarman | 93 mins | 1986
A brazenly anachronistic and sensual imagining of the life of Renaissance renegade Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (Nigel Terry), seen juggling two lovers (Sean Bean’s Ranuccio and Tilda Swinton’s Lena) while scandalizing the establis... -
Poison
Directed by Todd Haynes | 85 mins | 1991
With his first feature, Haynes took his influence from the patron saint of all queer outlaw art, the French writer and director Jean Genet. The result, a landmark of New Queer Cinema, was a trio of intercut, stylistically distinct stories drawn together by... -
Sebastiane
Leaving October 1
Directed by Derek Jarman | 90 mins | 1976
Jarman’s feature debut—co-directed with Humfress—makes blatant the latent homoeroticism in artistic renderings of the biblical story of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian, reveling in the male form while recounting a tale of repressed desir... -
So Pretty
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 merging with the action... -
Stranger by the Lake
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—where regular Franc... -
Totally F***ed Up
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, rejected by their families... -
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
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 Toronto Natural History... -
Mephisto
Leaving October 1
Directed by Itsvan Szabo | 146 mins | 1981
In early 1930s Germany, an ambitious stage actor (Klaus Maria Brandauer) enjoys the greatest success of his career in the role of Mephistopheles—and his new fame will become his downfall, as he clings to the spotlight by becoming an ea...