Best romantic gay movies
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It’s certainly not without its challenges, but it’s a powerful love story with real chemistry.
Stream on HBO Max.
Photo: ©Weinstein Company/Courtesy Everett Collection
This tragic tale follows the impossible romance between a housewife (Cate Blanchett) and an aspiring photographer (Rooney Mara) in the 1950s. Come for the lesbian fight club, stay for the gratuitously bloody conclusion.
Stream on MGM+.
Photo: Yorgos Lanthimos/Fox Searchlight / Everett Collection
Shout-out to Yorgos Lanthimos for giving us everything we didn’t know we so desperately needed: an absurdist depiction of 18th-century England starring Olivia Colman as a gay Queen Anne that confronts the anxieties of womanhood while remaining just a bit silly the whole time.
Stream on Disney+.
Photo: ©Focus Features/Courtesy Everett Collection
It’s a family drama, a romance, a coming of age.
The uniqueness of this film lies on how Ribeiro navigates the relationship between the two protagonists, Leonardo (played by Ghilherme Lobo) and Gabriel (played by Fábio Audi). Its stacked ensemble cast has amazing collective chemistry. Whether you've never pressed play or have seen it a thousand times, it's worth a look.
WATCH ON AMAZON
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The Half of It (2020)
When the nerdy Ellie gets recruited by a jock to try and woo the girl she ends up with a crush on, things get complicated.
After a 2018 Broadway revival, Netflix took a stab at another adaptation and mostly succeeded. What follows should be kept a surprise, but just keep in mind that the writer and director, Jane Schoenbrun, has said they wrote it about two months into their gender transition.
Stream on HBO Max.
Photo: Youtube
Following the relationship between cellmates in a Brazilian prison, this Oscar-nominated film made waves when it was first released in the 1980s.
Stream on HBO Max.
Photo: Ursula Coyote/2020 Warner Bros.
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A Secret Love (2020)
Older queer couples may especially love this love story between an All-American Girls Professional Baseball League player and her lover that spans decades. Which means there is space for experimentation and, often, failure for queer and trans cinema where there wasn’t before.
After meeting at a bookstore, they quickly fall in love and then must deal with the respective traumas creating tension in their relationship.
Related: Best Animated TV Shows with LGBTQ+ Characters
6 And Then We Danced
Directed by Levan Akin, a Swedish filmmaker of Georgian descent, the 2019 drama And Then We Danced tells the emotional story of gay sexual awakening put into the backdrop of Georgian ultra-conservative society.
As an adult, he falls in love with Clara (Aida Leiner), but their romance doesn’t go easily. I don’t just mean queer subtext, of which there has always been plenty; I mean overtly queer characters as early as Zapatas Bande in 1914, Ich Möchte Kein Mann Sein in 1918, and Anders als die Andern in 1919, all of which were German films made during the country’s Weimar period.
No, we are here to instead highlight some of the greatest movies in the canon of queer cinema that are available for you to stream at home. While their subterfuge was later discovered, theirs still became the first same-sex marriage in Spain, and their love story is iconic. More than anything, it’s a reliably wonderful way to spend an hour and 45 minutes.
Stream on Hulu.
Photo: IFC Films/Courtesy Everett Collection
This slow, artful story about a trans woman returning home to care for her mother is for viewers with patience and an appreciation for subtlety.
Stream on Hulu.
Photo: Brian Burgoyne /© Vertical Entertainment /courtesy Everett Collection
This is a classic trope — city girl goes home to her small town and rediscovers herself — except that the city girl is a gay man played by Jesse Plemons and the story is well-written, personal, and funny enough to still feel original.
Stream on Hulu.
Photo: Youtube
This one’s what we call a tearjerker, folks.
Call Me By Your Name explores the idea and fascination of love in depth thanks to the cast's marvelous performance which does justice to Aciman's story. Interestingly, this 2018 film is well-known for "being the first movie focusing on gay teenage romance released by a major studio." Thus, it is no surprise that a spin-off TV series called Love, Victor has been released by Hulu.
Related: Romantic Movies to Watch With Your Partner on Valentine's Day
11 Maurice
Set in the early 1900s, Mauriceis a film that's sure to evoke many emotions in the viewer.
He’s a quiet, glum child whose mother seems to be his only real source of warmth or affection — until he meets Maddy (Jack Haven). It’s a stressful, complex story about a group of gay men — and one straight intruder — gathering together to reminisce and destroy each other emotionally.
Stream on Netflix.
Photo: Youtube
Whoopi Goldberg, Mary-Louise Parker, and Drew Barrymore — in the car and on the run.
Because of their masculine gender presentation, the local kids in the area assume Mikael is a boy and treat him as such. He shares stories of his childhood in Kabul and then tells how he fled the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, escaped death, journeyed to Denmark via Russia, and found happiness with his husband-to-be. When he reaches adulthood, the wealthy professor Paulo (Raul Cortez) takes responsibility for him, helping him find a job and a place to live.