QUEER FILMS THAT CHANGED CINEMA
words by FRANCESCO PIZZUTI
For queer people, there is nothing quite like cinema.
Films, at their most surface quality, are visuals, images moving on screen, and meaning shifting with them. The power of cinema resides perhaps precisely in bridging the two — the inherent and the transcendental; image and meaning — and the queer gaze, willingly or not, has a special acquired talent for finding that connection, for seeing past conventions, past the overriding ordinary.
We grew up secretly looking for representation everywhere, for some of us, knowingly, for others, not. And even in the dark days when curated queer media lists weren’t really a thing and surely weren’t really accessible to us, when we didn’t quite know where to look and what to look for, with a lot of digging and a bit of imagination, we always made it work. Circling the corners of the internet, we ventured on with the simplest yet unstoppable curiosity, from one blue link to the next one, from obscure YouTube short films to random television movies containing any resemblance of male-on-male action.
Later on, we started recognising directors, names, cinematic currents, and queer cinema started to exist in our realm differently. Not just as something we had to make for ourselves, like pieces we had to rip out of a well-crafted garment destined for someone else, but as a material reality with decades of history and people; our people. Yet before our questions were even fully formed, before we knew how to put desire into words, cinema was always there, and queerness was too.
This both acquired and innate queer sensibility for representation not only influences the way we experience films, but also the way queer directors make them, the way queer artists explore the infinite plethora of human emotions and experiences with such unique power and resonance. So, with its cult classics, niche gems, and more polarising works, this list wants to be an immersion in this sensibility, in queer love, desire, longing, pain, tragedy, in queer resilience, camp, fun and sexiness!
HAPPY TOGETHER (1997)
BY WONG KAR-WAI
image via film-grab.com
Impossible not to kick off the list with this cinematic masterpiece. From its opening black-and-white sex scene to the hypnotic images of the Iguazú Falls crashing endlessly down, Happy Together takes the viewer on an intensely bodily journey through love, migration, isolation and heartbreak. Wong Kar-wai transforms the turbulent relationship between two men into something deeply intimate yet universal, while Christopher Doyle's mesmerising cinematography makes every frame ache with longing. Heartbreaking yet hopeful, it is a story of resilience; the stubborn desire to keep searching for connection.
J’AI TUÉ MA MÈRE – I KILLED MY MOTHER (2009)
BY XAVIER DOLAN
image via film-grab.com
“Do you think other kids use that tone with their mothers?” “Do you think other mothers raised their kids like you did?”
Xavier Dolan's remarkable directorial debut is one of queer cinema's most underrated gems. Rather than making sexuality its central conflict, I Killed My Mother explores the painfully intimate dysfunction between a mother and her gay son with honesty, humour and no easy villains. It understands the strange cruelty of growing up, of recognising yourself in someone you desperately want to reject. Even more astonishing: Dolan was only 19 when he made it.
HUSTLER WHITE (1996)
BY RICK CASTRO AND BRUCE LABRUCE
image via imdb.com
Dirty, subversive, hot and provocative, Hustler White documents a side of queer Los Angeles rarely granted cinematic tenderness. Somewhere between experimental fiction and underground documentary, Bruce LaBruce and Rick Castro transform hustlers, desire and bodily excess into an unapologetic portrait of queer sexuality outside respectability politics. A cult classic that still feels extremely radical.
TANGERINE (2015)
BY SEAN BAKER
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Staying in sun-drenched Los Angeles, that hazy concrete reality is now captured through the lens of an iPhone 5. Shot entirely on a smartphone, Tangerine follows two trans sex workers over the course of one unforgettable Christmas Eve, bursting with humour, chaos and unstoppable energy. There’s something so vibrant, different, warm and human about this portrayal of trans women that it had to make the list.
THE LIVING END (1992)
BY GREGG ARAKI
image via mubi.com
Oh, Gregg Araki, our collective founding father — the genius that you are.
A cornerstone of the New Queer Cinema movement, The Living End is a lovers-on-the-run story unlike anything that came before it. Shocking, subversive and unapologetically sexy, the film turns rage into rebellion while questioning purity, violence and what makes life worth living after the two protagonists discover they are HIV positive. At a time when mainstream representations of HIV were dominated by fear and tragedy, Araki offered something radically different: desire, anger and defiance. The perfect entry point into his iconic and furious queer universe.
MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO (1991)
BY GUS VAN SANT
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“I'm a connoisseur of roads. I've been tasting roads my whole life. This road will never end. It probably goes all around the world”
Dreamlike and quietly heartbreaking, Gus Van Sant's masterpiece follows two young hustlers drifting through America in search of home, love and belonging. Yet it is so much more than that. With an incredible sensibility, it touches on issues of bodily precarity, autonomy, and childhood trauma in an unprecedented way, speaking to a sense of queer displacement that goes well beyond material locations, becoming one of the defining films about chosen family and unrequited desire.
BUT I’M A CHEERLEADER (1999)
BY JAMIE BABBIT
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But I'm a Cheerleader is camp executed impeccably. Beneath its candy-coloured sets and razor-sharp humour lies a biting satire of conversion therapy and heteronormative expectations. More than two decades later, Jamie Babbit's comedy feels just as necessary and poignant, and remains funny, politically sharp and endlessly rewatchable.
MYSTERIOUS SKIN (2004)
BY GREGG ARAKI
image via film-grab.com
Not an easy watch, but an essential one. With Mysterious Skin, Gregg Araki approaches childhood trauma, violence, memory and sexuality with remarkable sensitivity and cinematic mastery, refusing simplistic explanations or comforting resolutions, but giving way to a set of bodily portrayals and metaphors that resonate viscerally. Ultimately, it is a film about survival, and in that, it is heartbreakingly hopeful. It is a catharsis. It makes you feel relentlessly because the way out is always through.
TONGUES UNTIED (1989)
BY MARLON RIGGS
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“My body contains as much anger as water”
Revolutionary in its profoundly sensuous form, this documentary mixes poetry and political manifesto, meeting us at the intersection of race and sexuality. Devastating and brilliant and incessant, through spoken word, performance and personal testimony, Tongues Untied remains one of the most powerful works in queer film history.
CABARET (1972)
BY BOB FOSSE
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Liza Minelli, please save us!
Long before queer stories were allowed to take up space in popular culture, Cabaret revelled in ambiguity. Set against the rise of fascism in Weimar Germany, Bob Fosse's musical explores sexuality as performance, pleasure and political vulnerability. Decades later, it remains as seductive as it is unsettling.
L’INCONNU DU LAC – STRANGER BY THE LAKE (2013)
BY ALAIN GUIRAUDIE
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Mysterious, unsettling and sun-soaked in a way that recalls The Talented Mr. Ripley — but make it actually queer, dark and sharp. Set against a secluded Mediterranean landscape, Stranger by the Lake conveys desire as both magnetic and terrifying, as attraction, fear and danger become inseparable. Alain Guiraudie captures eroticism with extraordinary tenderness and stunning cinematography, portraying explicit intimacy as a deeply human and visually gorgeous expression of desire. A haunting exploration of pleasure, obsession and the risks hidden within longing.
A TOUCH OF FEVER (1993)
BY RYŌSUKE HASHIGUCHI
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Perhaps the most niche entry in this list, Ryosuke Hashiguchi's A Touch of Fever is a tender and devastating portrayal of Japan's class struggle, queer coming-of-age and the gut-wrenching intensity of first love. Love here feels earnest in a way that is both rare and radical, while the film also explores sex work with remarkable complexity. Every character is fascinating, flawed and impossible to reduce. And that final bedroom scene — absolutely unforgettable — deserves its place in the queer cinema hall of fame.
In all the messiness, there is still strength and self-determination; few films have captured vulnerability quite like this.
THE HANDMAIDEN (2016)
BY PARK CHAN-WOOK
image via imdb.com
Seduction becomes strategy in Park Chan-wook's breathtaking adaptation of Fingersmith. Twisting together eroticism, deception and class politics, The Handmaiden delivers one of contemporary cinema's most unforgettable queer romances, where desire itself becomes a means of liberation.
PARIS IS BURNING (1991)
BY JENNIE LIVINGSTON
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This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone because to watch Paris Is Burning is to witness the foundations of so much contemporary queer culture. Chronicling New York's ballroom scene, the documentary celebrates Black and Latino queer communities who transformed exclusion into artistry, kinship and survival. It is a vital record of chosen families whose influence continues to shape today’s world — an essential reminder in these incredibly disorienting times.
CALL ME BY YOUR NAME (2017)
BY LUCA GUADAGNINO
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Impossible not to end with Call Me by Your Name. A polarising work nonetheless, but one that has resonated with so many people on an almost instinctive level. Call Me by Your Name is suspended in frames filled with touch, sunlight and a longing that seeps deep into your bones, like the feeling of a summer day slowly coming to an end. Luca Guadagnino creates a film about first love and the way it permanently reshapes the body, memory and desire. Profoundly queer yet incredibly universal, nothing quite comes close to it.
