Foreign gay movies

From Fassbinder to Pasolini and Sciamma, here are some of the best gay movies from the global arthouse, often bracing in how they freely bust taboos. Explore love and life across Europe with the best European gay movies! From Parisian romance to Berlin beats, each film is a journey of heart and soul. Many of the best films by queer filmmakers and many of the best films telling queer stories come from all around the world.

So we've put together this list of just a small sampling of those. With BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival upon us, we continue our celebration of queer cinema with a look at some of the best lesbian, gay and trans films from Scandinavia and the Nordic countries. From Rafiki to The Handmaiden, here are eight of the best international LGBTQ+ movies to watch.

By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy. We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. It has been updated on June 22, American movies and TV have made major strides in LGBTQ representation of late, but storytellers abroad have always been ahead of the curve, exploring sexuality and relationships with groundbreaking technique, and in ways often coded and ahead of their time.

From Rainer Werner Fassbinder to Pier Paolo Pasolini, the fluidity of human sexuality has long fascinated international filmmakers unafraid to bust taboos. Foreign filmmakers are often the ones to push the envelope when it comes to queer film, and they bring their liberated sensibility when they make movies on American soil.

Below is a sampling of some of the best international LGBTQ cinema out there — including alternative entries from popular filmmakers you may have missed. Framing his gentle coming-of-age tale around such a traditional piece of Georgian culture, Akin has made an inherently political film, rendered in sensitive terms with a celebratory spirit. With distinctive features and a lithe physicality, lead actor Levan Gelbakhiani toggles effortlessly between child-like innocence, explosive anger, and wisdom beyond his years.

His riveting performance is indisputably the heart and spine of the film.

Because of the sensitive subject matter, Akin and his team had to use guerilla filmmaking tactics to shoot in the conservative country, giving the film a gorgeous cinema verite quality. The film has stoked protests in Tbilisi, where it was shot, proving that queer filmmaking is still a political act. Discovered by the historian Judith C. Brown in the mids, Benedetta Carlini Virginie Efira was a 17th century mystic who had visions of Christ, claiming he wanted to marry her, and even received the stigmata.

A tender, private vigil the two share as Sean succumbs to the disease is one of the great send-offs in movies. What place does romance have in the age of online dating and casual hook-up culture? The next one-night stand could be the love of your life, or you could never see them again. When you can order the next pretty thing to your door, is it possible to make a real connection? The film centers on two Indian sisters-in-law, Sita Nandita Das and Radha Shabana Azmi , who are chained in loveless, arranged marriages and in turn fall for each other.

Centered on the shiftless Russell Tom Cullen and the alluring Glen Chris New , what first functions as a spur-of-the-moment one-night stand soon blossoms into a full-blown love affair. Few on-screen couples have the kind of chemistry that Cullen and New display without any artifice, and the believability and naturalism of their bond pushes the film to an even higher level.

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Argentina proves an evocative setting for the story of Ho and Lai — with the Iguazu Falls an especially vivid backdrop — whose break-ups and make-ups make for compelling cinema even as you wish they would just walk away from each other. When her partner goes to jail for fraud, Chela Ana Brun is forced to sell many of her family heirlooms, and begins driving a taxi for the local neighborhood women. English filmmaker John Maybury never topped this grotesque, horrific, and brash biopic of the life of painter Francis Bacon, here portrayed as a narcissist, soul-sucking decadent by Derek Jacobi.

Tumbling into his life and quite literally into the surreal opening scene of the movie is George Dyer, a handsome but tragic thief played by Daniel Craig. Francis offers him shelter, riches, and a warm bed, but their courtship proves toxic and mutually parasitic. Sex, lies, adultery, obsession, and betrayal collide in this stylish melodrama about a bored, childless housewife who falls for a beautiful model, sparking an intense relationship with perilous consequences.

On its face, the war is between the white minority government and Angola, whose Communism the South African Defense Force wants to stop from spreading; but really, the atrocities as seen inflicted in this movie are governed by the power-seeking regime of Apartheid, and not any real threat. But when he is attacked by a racist gang, he reignites a relationship with their leader, his former lover played by Daniel Day-Lewis in one of his breakout roles.

Ricardo Menses plays Sergio, a trash collector by day who cruises the streets at night in a black rubber suit, leading him down increasingly dark paths. Brad Davis, who would die from HIV-related complications three years later, is perfectly cast as the title character, a criminal in love who, much like Genet and Fassbinder, seals his own tragic fate. The film that made waves when it was banned in its home country despite a Cannes debut, this tender queer romance pulses with bight colors and the electric butterflies of young love.

Franck Pierre Deladonchamps ignores all warning signs telling him not to fall for Michel Christophe Paou , a handsome, Burt-Reynolds-meets-Tom-of-Finland type, especially after Franck witnesses a murder by drowning in the lake.