If you plan camping with your loved one, bring a small video projector with you as a surprise (there are several projectors on Amazon which are very cheap and you can play it from your phone, on the tent). And of course some nice drinks and glasses. During the night, a romantic movie under the stars and a nice drink can make an unforgettable trip.
Here are some films you would love to see. Newer or older, indie, American or European. We have selected not-so-mainstream movies, artsier, loving movies.
ESTO NO ES BERLÍN – THIS IS NOT BERLIN
Directed by Hari Sama
Mexico, 2019
The year is 1986, and World Cup fever has hit Mexico. 17-year-old Carlos doesn’t fit in anywhere: not in his family nor with the friends he has at school. But everything changes when he is invited to a mythical, underground nightclub where he discovers post-punk, drugs, politics and sexual fluidity.
A heady plunge into the underground excesses of 1980s Mexico City, Hari Sama’s coming-of-age film roars with a youthful thirst for love, revolt, and the catharsis of art. Rebelling against the nostalgia for artistic hedonism, this subversive time capsule questions the ethics of the creative process.
Where to see: Mubi
BEACH RATS
Directed by Eliza Hittman
USA, 2017
This is among the best neorealism movies I’ve seen in years. British newcomer (already distributed in several new films) Harris Dickinson convinces as a Brooklyn delinquent who lusts after older men in Eliza Hittman’s superb second film.
On the outskirts of Brooklyn, Frankie, an aimless teenager, suffocates under the oppressive glare cast by his family and a toxic group of friends. Struggling with his own identity, Frankie begins to scour hookup sites for older men while entering into a relationship with a young woman.
Where to see: Mubi
KEEP THE LIGHTS ON
Directed by Ira Sachs
USA, 2012
Filmmaker Erik and closeted lawyer Paul meet through a casual encounter, but find a deeper connection and become a couple. In an almost decade-long relationship defined by highs, lows, and dysfunctional patterns, Erik struggles to negotiate his own boundaries and dignity while being true to himself.
Premiering at Sundance, this indie is a sensitive look at the lifecycle of an imperfect match. Director Ira Sachs based the script on his own personal relationship but transcends the personal aspects of his experience to form a universal and resonant look at the bonds formed through a partnership.
Where to see: Mubi
THE BOYS IN THE BAND
Directed by Joe Mantello
USA, 2020
This new film version of the off-Broadway hit about gay lives in New York is strange, compelling, and unexpectedly potent.
Hammy and stagey and campy it might be, but The Boys in the Band turns out to have a fiercely watchable soap-operatic intensity, a sustained attack of telenovela craziness, culminating in a full-on anxiety attack from its leading character. It’s based on the 1968 off-Broadway hit by Mart Crowley (who died in March this year) about a group of gay men in New York gathering for a birthday party in an era before Stonewall, before Aids, a time when metropolitan sophisticates sort of tolerated “swishiness” in the Bohemian arts scene, and when Gore Vidal was saying, pour épater les bourgeois, that there were homosexual acts but no homosexual people.
Where to see: Netflix
EL BAILE DE LOS 41
(DANCE OF THE FORTY-ONE)
Directed by David Pablos
Mexico, 2021
The film by director David Pablos is inspired by the most famous gay party of the 20th century in Mexico. Juggling a marital melodrama, a queer romance, and a political drama within a chronicle of a pivotal historical scandal, “Dance of the 41” was always going to be an ambitious proposition. One whose lofty aspirations are suggested in some of its most affecting scenes. Its final beat, like the entirety of its fabulous, tragic final act, is as masterful as it is heartbreaking. As a whole, is like a painstakingly staged tableau vivant of late-19th-century Mexico and the patriarchal power structures that undergirded it.
Where to see: Netflix
AKCJA “HIACYNT” – OPERATION HYACINTH
Directed by Piotr Domalewski
Poland, 2021
Between 1985 and 1987, the secret services of the Polish police were engaged in an unusual project: the creation of a national database that formally registered homosexuals living on the territory of the country. The result of that operation – baptized with the common name by which gays were pejoratively nicknamed in Poland, a way of stigmatizing them as a uniform collective – was about eleven thousand files with data on men who were considered dangerous for the communist regime, a system of persecution that was also replicated in Fidel Castro’s Cuba.
The story starts from there and ends up in a … no spoiler. Have to see it
Of course, is still new and not to many reviews, but has an astonishing 100% Rotten Tomatoes score.
Where to see: Netflix
MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO
Directed by Gus Van Sant
USA, 1991
I did not realize I am looking at a loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Henry IV” until late in the movie. Mike Waters (River Phoenix) is a gay hustler afflicted with narcolepsy. Scott Favor (Keanu Reeves) is the rebellious son of a mayor. Together, the two travel from Portland, Oregon to Idaho and finally to the coast of Italy in a quest to find Mike’s estranged mother. Along the way, they turn tricks for money and drugs, eventually attracting the attention of a wealthy benefactor and sexual deviant.
Fabulous director, brilliant actors, and story exceptional written. After 21 years the film on Rotten Tomatoes still has 80% score.
Where to see:
Apple TV
Amazon Prime Video
