Puppies, ghosts and euphoric snogging: the 25 best homosexual films of the century so far
25. Portrait of a Lady on Energy (2019)
One detractor called it “a Shawshank Redemption for progressive millennials”. But the force of Céline Sciamma’s lesbian love story about an artist and her unwitting sitter on a remote island in 18th-century Brittany is undeniable. As is the integrity of its central dynamic, stripped of power imbalances, hierarchies – and men.
24. Diamantino (2018)
A low-budget, high-kitsch, torn-from-the-headlines football fantasy about a Ronaldo-esque football star who hallucinates giant pekingese puppies frolicking on the pitch whenever he scores. Pitch in a cross-dressing refugee subplot, lesbian spies and a far-right cloning conspiracy and you have a goofy and irrepressible testament to intersectionality.
23. We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (2021)
Jane Schoenbrun became an A24 sensation with I Saw the TV Glow in 2024, but it is her previous film, a bare-bones chiller about an online horror game, that remains her most original work. Less instantly legible as a trans allegory than her follow-up, perhaps, but all the more disquieting for that.
22. The V
The best LGBTQ+ movies of all time
Photograph: Kate Wootton/TimeOut
With the help of head directors, actors, writers and activists, we count down the most essential Diverse films of all time
Like queer culture itself, homosexual cinema is not a monolith. For a extended time, though, that’s certainly how it felt. In the past, if homosexual lives and issues were ever portrayed at all on screen, it was typically from the perspective of white, cisgendered men. But as more opportunities have opened up for queer performers and filmmakers to tell their possess stories, the scope of the LGBTQ+ experiences that have made their way onto the screen has gradually widened to more frequently include the transgender community and queer people of colour.
It’s still not perfect, of course. In Hollywood, as in community at large, there are many barriers left to breach and ceilings to shatter. But those recent strides deserve to be celebrated – as perform the bold films made long before the mainstream was willing to agree them. To that conclude, we enlisted some Homosexual cultural pioneers, as good as Time Out writers to assist in assembling a list of the greatest gay films ever made.
Written by C
Proper representation on screen, especially as we grow up, is foundational to our understanding of ourselves. Gay representation in films has expanded and evolved, particularly in the late 20th and early 21st century, away from stereotypes and tropes and into more fully fleshed-out characters. The history of queer cinema is long and often fraught, with early elevated points including The Rocky Horror Picture Show and John Waters's filmography, and many unfortunate low points. But daring artists possess explored identity and visibility in fascinating and gorgeous ways, both in fiction and nonfiction spaces.
From heartwarming rom-coms to tragic dramas to compelling coming-of-age stories, these are some of the best LGBTQ+ movies—some of which have gone down in history as the best films of all time. There's a lot to love, and a lot to select from, but here are some picks to initiate with if you're a fan of queer cinema.
'All of Us Strangers' (2023)
(Image credit: Searchlight Pictures)
Andrew Haigh’s fantasy drama will create you feel a range of emotions you’ve never felt. Based on the Taichi Yamada novel Strangers, it stars Andrew Scott as a lonely screenwrit
The 30 Best LGBTQIA+ Films of All Time
In this first major critical survey of LGBTQIA+ films, over 100 film experts including critics, writers and programmers such as Joanna Hogg, Mark Cousins, Peter Strickland, Richard Dyer, Nick James and Laura Mulvey, as well as past and present BFI Flare programmers, have voted the Top 30 LGBTQIA+ Films of All Time. The poll’s results represent 84 years of cinema and 12 countries, from countries including Thailand, Japan, Sweden and Spain, as adv as films that showed at BFI Flare such as Orlando (1992), Pretty Thing (1996), Weekend (2011) and Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013).
The winner is Todd Haynes’ award-winning Carol, closely followed by Andrew Haigh’s Weekend, and Hong Kong amorous drama Happy Together, directed by Wong Kar-wai, in third place. While Carol is a surprisingly recent motion picture to top the poll, it’s a feature that has moved, delighted and enthralled audiences, and looks set to be a modern classic.
“The festival has elongated supported my work,” said Haynes, “from Poison and Dottie Gets Spanked in the early 1990s through to Carol which is screening on 35mm later this week in BFI Flare’s Best of Year programme. I’m so pr
