GAY45’s annual selection is a thoughtful, rigorously curated reflection of the year in queer cinema.
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You can simply scroll past — but please don’t overlook the importance of an independent queer press.
You can simply scroll past—but please don't overlook the importance of an independent queer press.
Time is now or never.
Queer voices disappear without independent journalism to amplify them.
We document what others won't touch.
We hold power to account when it threatens our communities.
This work exists only because you choose to fund it directly.
Donate over €25/month and receive our limited-edition tote bag — a badge of resistance, a statement that you stand for fearless journalism.
We are grateful!
Can't donate? Sharing our work helps more than you think
Our list has emerged from months of discussion and debate among our film critics and editorial team. Beyond mere rankings, this list embodies our shared belief that cinema remains one of the most powerful spaces for queer storytelling — a mirror to our desires, struggles, and evolving identities.
Films
O Riso e a Faca (I Only Rest in the Storm)
I Only Rest in the Storm, the latest feature by Portuguese director Pedro Pinho, confirms his standing as one of Europe’s most intriguing political storytellers. Known for The Nothing Factory, Pinho blends realism with quiet lyricism, following a queer activist forced into hiding after a wave of state repression. Shot in windswept coastal towns and abandoned industrial sites, the film charts friendship, fear and furtive romance with a documentary-like restraint in its observance. Rather than heroic martyrdom, Pinho shows the small, ordinary acts that sustain resistance. Critically acclaimed on the festival circuit, I Only Rest in the Storm has been hailed as one of the year’s finest queer political dramas—intimate, tense and unexpectedly hopeful.
La Petite Dernière (The Little Sister)
Hafsia Herzi’s tender coming-of-age left Cannes with the Queer Palm and Best Actress for Nadia Melliti, sealing its place among the year’s essential queer films. Adapted from Fatima Daas’s 2020 novel, it traces a French-Algerian teenager balancing devout faith, family duty and awakening desire for women. Herzi’s spare, watchful direction and Melliti’s luminous presence render identity not as thesis but lived texture, precise and unforced. A Franco-German co-production released in France on 22 October 2025, it quietly stands out for marrying political quietude with emotional candour—an intimate film with the power of a manifesto.
En el camino (On the Road)
En el camino (On the Road), directed by Mexican filmmaker David Pablos, emerged from Venice with the Queer Lion, a decisive endorsement for a film of such moral clarity. Pablos, best known for Las Elegidas (The Chosen Ones), turns his lens to a group of queer migrants travelling north through Mexico, tracing love, fear and fleeting solidarity along the railway lines that slice the country in two. Shot with documentary realism and a patient, unhurried rhythm, the film refuses heroic clichés; its power lies in quiet gestures and the dignity of survival. In a year crowded with louder contenders, On the Road is one of the most humane and affecting queer films of them all.
Lesbian Space Princess
Lesbian Space Princess, directed by Leela Varghese and Emma Hough Hobbs, swept the Teddy Award at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, a prize that often foretells a film’s long cultural afterlife. A riotous sci-fi comedy about a rebellious royal fleeing a compulsory heterosexual marriage, it operates with the irreverence of camp and the precision of political satire. Beneath the glitter, the film asks how queer joy survives in systems built to repress it. The duo’s sharp writing and exuberant world-building give the genre a welcome jolt. Among 2025’s queer releases, few films have managed to be this funny, defiant and emotionally sincere.
After the Hunt
After the Hunt, Luca Guadagnino’s (Queer) latest feature, consolidates his reputation as one of cinema’s most assured chroniclers of desire. Though not explicitly labelled an LGBTQ film, Guadagnino’s gaze remains unmistakably queer: fluid identities, oblique longing and relationships that resist tidy definition. Centred on a group of scholars entangled in power, secrecy and romance, the film blends the cool surfaces of a thriller with the emotional volatility familiar from Call Me by Your Name and Challengers. Meticulously performed and visually exacting, After the Hunt has been widely cited as one of the year’s finest queer-adjacent dramas—stylish, unsettling and quietly resonant.
Plainclothes by Carmen Emmi
Carmen Emmi’s Plainclothes arrives with the urgency of unspoken histories. Set in late-nineties Syracuse, the film follows Lucas, an undercover policeman tasked with entrapping gay men, who finds himself undone by desire when he meets Andrew, one of his targets. Emmi shoots with grainy camcorder intimacy, transforming surveillance into a meditation on self-policing—that peculiar violence of concealment. Tom Blyth and Russell Tovey deliver performances of aching restraint, their chemistry born not from freedom but from the terror of being seen. What begins as procedural thriller mutates into something rawer: a study of what it costs to live in code. The final reckoning, staged at a suffocating New Year’s Eve party, recalls the emotional precision of early Mike Leigh, though Emmi’s vision is entirely his own. A devastating debut that understands that coming out is never really over—it’s archaeology, unearthing what was buried to survive.
The History of Sound
The History of Sound, directed by Oliver Hermanus and led by Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor, arrived as one of the most anticipated queer films of the year. Adapted from Ben Shattuck’s short story, it follows two young men travelling across the United States during the First World War to record the voices of ordinary citizens—a poetic premise that becomes a love story marked by tenderness and inevitable loss. Hermanus, whose Moffie and Living confirmed him as a master of restrained emotion, gives the film an aching intimacy. Beautifully acted and formally elegant, The History of Sound has been touted as one of 2025’s finest queer dramas: deeply human, quietly devastating and impossible to shake.
Queer
Queer, Luca Guadagnino’s long-gestating adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ novella, finally reached cinemas as one of the year’s most discussed queer releases. Set in post-war Mexico City, the film centres on Lee (Daniel Craig), an ageing American expatriate drifting through cantinas and cheap rooms, undone by his obsessive desire for a younger drifter, played with aloof magnetism by Drew Starkey. Guadagnino resists nostalgia: the film is humid, claustrophobic, and unsparing about loneliness, addiction and the violence of unrequited longing. Craig’s performance is a revelation—raw, needy, and stripped of celebrity armour. Visually baroque and emotionally bruising, Queer stands as one of the most daring queer films of the year, unafraid of ugliness or vulnerability.
Pillion
Pillion, directed by British filmmaker Harry Lighton, took home Best Screenplay in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section, a remarkable feat for a debut feature of such restraint. The film follows two young men riding pillion across Britain after a family funeral, sharing petrol stations, cheap hotels and the awkward silences of grief. What begins as a road movie turns, almost imperceptibly, into a tender queer awakening. Lighton, who previously explored queer masculinity in his BAFTA-nominated short Wren Boys, writes with economy and emotional precision. Pillion is one of the year’s standout queer films: intimate, beautifully observed, and free of cliché—proof that quiet stories can still hit hardest.
Series
Black Doves
Black Doves, Netflix’s moody London espionage drama, was quietly renewed for a second season after a strong global debut. Created by Joe Barton and led by Keeley Hawes and Sarah Lancashire, the series threads political intrigue with a queer love story between Hawes’s disillusioned diplomat’s wife and a charismatic activist. Instead of treating sexuality as subplot, the show lets desire drive the narrative: betrayals, surveillance and the state’s jealous eye. Critically praised for its sharp writing and Lancashire’s magnetic performance, Black Doves stands out in a crowded field of spy thrillers—elegant, tightly paced, and unafraid to see queer love as a matter of national consequence.
What it Feels Like for a Girl
Based on Paris Lees’ memoir, BBC’s eight-episode series follows Byron, a teenager navigating gender and self-discovery in early 2000s Nottingham. Ellis Howard carries the demanding role from schoolboy to trans woman starting university , delivering what critics call a magnetic, charismatic performance. The series has earned six RTS Craft & Design Awards nominations , whilst Howard was named to the 2025 BAFTA Breakthrough list . It also claimed best fiction, best ensemble cast, and the Ciudad de Cádiz Award at South Series Festival , plus the Virgin Atlantic Attitude Awards’ Television Award for best LGBTQ show . Set against the Y2K club scene’s chemical euphoria, Byron escapes Hucknall’s post-mining desolation to find belonging with the Fallen Divas—though the series arguably sprawls beyond its most taut early episodes, when discomfort and tenderness held equal weight.
Invisible Boys
Invisible Boys, adapted from Holden Sheppard’s award-winning novel and released as a limited Australian series, became one of the year’s strongest queer dramas. Set in a conservative mining town in Western Australia, it follows three teenage boys grappling with sexuality, faith and shame in a community that prefers silence to truth. Rather than lean on melodrama, the series builds its power through small rebellions: stolen moments, bruised friendships and the slow terror of being seen. Critics praised its unvarnished portrait of rural masculinity and its refusal to sanitise violence or hope. Honest, bruising and beautifully acted, Invisible Boys stands among the year’s most affecting queer series.
Gen V
Gen V, the anarchic spin-off from The Boys, returned for a second season with its queer politics sharper than before. Set in Godolkin University, where young superheroes are groomed for corporate glory, the series skewers American culture: identity commodified, sexuality weaponised, liberation wrapped in branding. Its queer characters are not decoration but moral centre—friends, rivals and lovers navigating fame, surveillance and violence. Critics noted the show’s willingness to treat power, consent and desire with an honesty rare in mainstream genre television. Wild, bloody and unexpectedly tender, Gen V proved in its second season that superhero storytelling can be unapologetically queer and still bite.
Brilliant Minds
Zachary Quinto inhabits the role with a particular intensity—a gay actor channelling the spirit of gay world-famous author and psychiatrist Oliver Sacks, the late neurologist whose case studies read like parables of human strangeness. The second season of “Brilliant Minds” continues its meditation on that most elusive terrain: consciousness itself. The premise remains elegant in its simplicity. A maverick neurologist and his team of interns navigate the labyrinth of the human mind, encountering patients whose conditions illuminate the fragile architecture of perception and memory. But the show’s real ambition lies in its refusal to separate healer from patient. These doctors grapple with their own fractured relationships and precarious mental health, blurring the line between observer and observed. It’s a medical drama as philosophical inquiry—less interested in diagnoses than in the fundamental mystery of what it means to be a thinking, feeling creature trapped inside a three-pound universe of neurons.
Documentaries
Satanische Sau (Satanic Sow)
Satanische Sau (Satanic Sow), Rosa von Praunheim’s furious, darkly comic documentary, stormed the Berlinale to win the Teddy Award for Best Documentary and later secured an Oscar nomination, a career-capping triumph for the 82-year-old pioneer of queer cinema. It went on to become the most awarded documentary of 2025, collecting prizes across Europe and North America. Von Praunheim dissects Germany’s far-right resurgence through the eyes of queer activists, drag performers and migrant artists, blending vérité testimony with his signature theatrical provocations. Grotesque, witty and deadly serious, Satanische Sau stands out for its moral clarity and punk energy—history lesson, protest and carnival in one.
Peter Hujar’s Day
Peter Hujar’s Day, directed by Ira Sachs, is a luminous, meditative portrait of the legendary New York photographer, his friends and the city that shaped them. Structuring the film around a single day in the late 1970s, Sachs blends archival footage, interviews and staged fragments to reconstruct the bohemian downtown world that AIDS would soon decimate. Rather than hagiography, the documentary lingers on Hujar’s wit, anger and uncompromising gaze; his portraits of queer life feel both intimate and defiant. Critics praised the film’s tenderness and formal elegance. Among 2025’s queer releases, Peter Hujar’s Day stands as a quietly devastating masterpiece.
Queer As Punk
Queer As Punk, directed by Malaysian filmmaker Yihwen Chen, emerged as one of 2025’s most electrifying queer documentaries. Tracing the underground punk scenes of Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and Manila, the film follows queer and trans musicians who turn cramped basements and DIY stages into sanctuaries of rage, joy and chosen family. Chen’s camera is intimate but unsentimental: bruises, police raids, and ecstatic mosh-pit communion are given equal weight. Critics praised its rare access to communities usually erased from mainstream Asian media. Raw, defiant and unexpectedly tender, Queer As Punk proves punk remains a lifeline—not just a sound, but a survival strategy.
Come See Me in the Good Light
Come See Me in the Good Light, Ryan White’s deeply moving documentary about queer elders in the American South, left Sundance with the Festival Favourite Award—a clear sign of its emotional force. White, known for The Case Against 8 and Ask Dr. Ruth, follows a network of LGBTQ seniors who survived decades of hostility only to face loneliness, illness and erasure in old age. Yet the film resists tragedy: cooking lessons, church choirs and late-life romances offer pockets of joy. Meticulously researched and quietly poetic, Come See Me in the Good Light stands among 2025’s most affecting queer documentaries—tender, political and unforgettable.
As the year closes, this selection stands as a reminder of how wildly expansive queer cinema has become—restless, inventive and unwilling to settle for easy narratives. And 2026 already promises to push those boundaries further. From long-awaited debuts to bold political dramas and new voices emerging from unexpected corners of the world, the year ahead looks rich with possibility. If 2025 proved anything, it is that queer storytelling is not merely flourishing; it is redefining the cultural landscape.
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