From a country famous all over the world as the birthplace of cinema, Impressionism and the humble pain au chocolat, comes four award-winning films about gay life and growing up. Much like their sought after paintings and pastry treats, these delights prove that when it comes to finesse and flavour in filmmaking - you can't beat the French. The short films are: Falling [Tomber] (2018); The Return [Le retour] (2014); Footing (2012); The Swimming Trunks [Le maillot de bain] (2013).
Mona Lisa Smile (2003)
Katherine Watson is a recent UCLA graduate hired to teach art history at the prestigious all-female Wellesley College, in 1953. Determined to confront the outdated mores of society and the institution that embraces them, Katherine inspires her traditional students, including Betty and Joan, to challenge the lives they are expected to lead.
Dedalus (2018)
In rural Iowa, a grocery cashier watches helplessly as classmates conceal their act of sexual violence against his teenaged step-sister. A hustler tricks for food, shelter, and intimacy during a winter in New York City. Mortality compels a father to leave his home in Los Angeles and move in with his daughter. Jonah Greenstein's gorgeously shot feature debut laces loneliness with beauty to create a film of startling cinematic intimacy.
Wilde (1997)
The story of Oscar Wilde, genius, poet, playwright and the First Modern Man. The self-realisation of his homosexuality caused Wilde enormous torment as he juggled marriage, fatherhood and responsibility with his obsessive love for Lord Alfred Douglas.
Milk (2008)
The true story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man ever elected to public office. In San Francisco in the late 1970s, Harvey Milk becomes an activist for gay rights and inspires others to join him in his fight for equal rights that should be available to all Americans.
Tell Me About Yourself (2022)
Chava, a 17-year-old boy who has a secret admirer, feels more attracted to boys. When leaving his school in a rainy day, Carlos offers him a ride, and so their adventure begins.
A Different Story (1978)
A gay man and a lesbian enter into a marriage of convenience in order to prevent his deportation, and then gradually fall in love with one another.
Cassandro (2023)
The true story of Saúl Armendáriz, a gay amateur wrestler from El Paso that rises to international stardom after he creates the character Cassandro, the “Liberace of Lucha Libre.” In the process, he upends not just the macho wrestling world but also his own life.
101 Reykjavik (2000)
Thirty-year-old Hlynur still lives with his mother and spends his days drinking, watching porn and surfing the net while living off unemployment checks. A girl is interested in him, but he stands back from commitment. His mother's Spanish flamenco teacher, Lola, moves in with them for Christmas. On New Year's Eve, while his mother is away, Hlynur finds out Lola is a lesbian, but also ends up having sex with her. He soon finds out he and his mother are sharing more than a house. Eventually he must find out where he fits into the puzzle, and how to live life less selfishly.
Farewell My Concubine (1993)
Two boys meet at an opera training school in Peking in 1924. Their resulting friendship will span nearly 70 years and endure some of the most troublesome times in China's history.
The Hunger (1983)
Five-thousand-year-old vampire Miriam promises her lovers the gift of eternal life. When John, her cellist companion for centuries, discovers that he has suddenly begun growing old, he attempts to seek out the help of Dr. Sarah Roberts, a researcher on the mechanisms of aging.
Forever 17 (2019)
While same sex marriage is broadly celebrated in Europe and North America, Hong Kong reminded as a metropolis where such basic social security is missing for the queer communities. Dedicated to the Hong Kong queer icon, Ellen Loo, who committed suicide in 2018, and starting from the moment where Ricky come out to his family, Forever 17 explore an imaginable future for the queer community, through love and acceptance, betrayal and forgiveness, pain and recovery, death and survival, inheritance and eternity, and honouring a life long commitments.
Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985)
The story of two radically different men thrown together in a Latin American prison cell. One is Valentin, a journalist being tortured for his political beliefs. The other is Molina, a gay window-dresser who fills their lonely nights by spinning romantic fantasies drawn from memories of old movies.
A Matter of Trust (2022)
The lives of five unrelated people — a husband, a doctor, a wife, a student, and a young daughter — are turned upside-down with irreversible consequences.
4 Days in France (2016)
A man leaves everything behind to travel aimlessly through France, letting himself be guided only by the people and landscapes he encounters: four days and four nights of wandering, during which his lover tries to locate him via Grindr, a smartphone dating app.
Show Me Love (1998)
Two teenage girls in small-town Sweden. Elin is beautiful, popular, and bored with life. Agnes is friendless, sad, and secretly in love with Elin.
Ladyboy (2011)
Kristian, who is a transvestite, still lives at home with his mother Emma, because she loves him just the way he is. Life as a transvestite offers many humiliations from the outside world, but with his mom, Kristian feels that he can be himself. Until one day when Emma meets the alcoholic Søren, who does not have the same tolerance...
Dark Satellites (2022)
A snack bar owner smokes with his Muslim neighbor in the stairwell of their apartment building at night. Her husband is his good friend. They draw closer to one another as the nights go on and look out over the city to the dark satellites, the brutalist concrete buildings on the outskirts of the city - relics of the GDR past. A security guard watches over Objekt 95, a satellite town with a residential complex which many foreigners call home. While on patrol at night, he gets to know a young Ukrainian woman who fled her home country when the war broke out. He wants to protect her, while his friend, the “old security guard”, radios to him from an abandoned Russian barrack night after night. A woman from the train cleaning service drinks in a train station bar after her night shift. There, she meets a hairdresser. The two of them become friends and spend many nights together in the station. Every night, her desire grows even greater for this woman who is exactly as lonely as she is.
Boy Toys (2010)
Laruang Lalake is a realist film that portrays the workers within the Filipino gay film industry and their personal stories - from the naughty to the gritty, from the horny to the hopeful. The film weaves the journey of ambitious probinsyano actor Samuel, Marc the idealistic film crew member who is secretly in love with Samuel and Wilredo a filmmaker on the brink of bankruptcy. And then there is also Peejay who is determined to steal a name for himeslf. As the camera grinds between naked bodies in homerotic play, its all in a day's work for eveyone living in a society that is yet to acept the Filipino gay man.