The 9 favorite queer movies of LGBTQ and ally filmmakers, from 'Brokeback Mountain' to 'Call Me By Your Name'
Jacob Sarkisian
- Every queer cinema fan has their own favourite LGBTQ movie that means something to them, but it's fascinating to hear the opinions of the queer filmmakers themselves.
- Insider spoke to 9 LGBTQ and ally filmmakers about their favourite queer movies and TV shows.
- Oscar-nominated "Precious" director Lee Daniels picked out 1990's "Paris is Burning" as his favourite queer movie, while "Colette" director Wash Westmoreland chose 2019's Georgian film "And Then We Danced" as his pick.
- Craig Johnson, who directed Netflix's "Alex Strangelove," loves all of Todd Haynes cinematography, but chose "Parting Glances" and "Call Me By Your Name" as his most beloved LGBTQ films.
- Meanwhile, "The Way He Looks" director Daniel Ribeiro still remembers 1996's "Beautiful Thing," and nearly all of them namechecked "Brokeback Mountain" as inspiration.
Every queer movie fan has their own LGBTQ movies that mean something to them, whether it's the first time you saw yourself on screen or a movie that made you feel happy to be queer.
Queer movies can have a huge impact on our relationship with queerness, and with ourselves, and can inspire us, motivate us, and move us. It's the same with queer directors, who all started as fans of queer cinema.
Insider spoke to nine LGBTQ and ally filmmakers about their personal favourite queer movie, which range from "Paris is Burning" to "Call Me By Your Name," with honorable mentions for movies with queer sensibilities like Rogers & Hammerstein's "Cinderella."
In our conversations with these filmmakers, we discussed what exactly what a queer movie is, and how one can define such a thing.
"Empire" creator and the Oscar-nominated director behind "Precious," Lee Daniels, told Insider:
"A queer movie is a film that has queer sensibilities and that can reach queers. It doesn't necessarily have to be queer in subject matter, but there's a common denominator that queers have in their appreciation for cinema, and it's rare that we're not in sync about what sparkles on-screen."
Meanwhile, "The Way He Looks" director Daniel Ribeiro said: "Queer films are being different from what is supposed to be normal. Being queer changes so much through the years, that's why its hard to define it. Being queer in the 90s is one thing and being queer today is another. But they are always challenging society's norms, whether talking about gender or sexuality. A queer film is a film that is going to question and talk about those subjects."
Craig Johnson, the director of Netflix's "Alex Strangelove," told Insider he "would love to be confused as to the definition of a queer movie" rather than locking queer cinema into its own separate category.
"I'd love to see a queer James Bond, eventually. I'd like to see the fusion of queer characters in more major studio films and it being like 'that's just the way the world works, let's have these characters in the forefront,' rather than a separate genre."
'God's Own Country' director Francis Lee has a special place in his heart for 1985's 'My Beautiful Laundrette.'
Francis Lee, whose LGBTQ drama "Ammonite" starring Saoirse Ronan and Kate Winslet will release later this year, said: "I have lots of favourite LGBTQ+ films but one of my absolute favourites is 'My Beautiful Laundrette.'
"It was probably the first queer film I ever saw and it is one I often rewatch. I love the complicated relationship it depicts that ultimately leaves you with such a strong sense of hope."
Directed by Stephen Frears, "My Beautiful Laundrette" stars Daniel Day-Lewis and Gordon Warnecke as interracial lovers opening a laundrette in the 1980s.
"I find it deeply romantic and sexy but with a real political bite. Its depiction of 1980's Thatcherite Britain along with the class and race issues still feel extremely resonant today. I think it's beautifully acted and for the first time gave me a sense of a queer relationship that could possibly live on happily after the end credits."
'Maurice' star James Wilby loved 1999's 'The Talented Mr. Ripley.'
James Wilby, who starred in "Maurice" (directed by "Call Me By Your Name" writer James Ivory), namechecked "My Beautiful Laundrette" as one of his favourite movies:
"It was absolutely direct. The love scenes were probably stronger than the scenes in 'Maurice.' They were really there, and believable. It was beautifully directed, of course. Wonderfully, wonderfully acted."
However, it was "The Talented Mr. Ripley" that Wilby spoke most passionately about: "That is a brilliant film. I loved it, absolutely loved it. There's an example of somebody the same age doing the manipulations. I thought it was a phenomenal film. I'm a great fan of Anthony Minghella and I just thought it was just gorgeous, every single aspect of it. Matt Damon and Jude Law were perfectly cast. I must see it again."
'My Beautiful Laundrette' star Gordon Warnecke has a long list of queer movie favorites with 'Venus' (2017) at the top.
Gordon Warnecke's "My Beautiful Laundrette" changed the lives of two directors on this list, with Westmoreland saying Warnecke's performance was incredible. He's a big fan of queer cinema, and told Insider the indie comedy "Venus" made his number one spot.
"This is a film I did a few years ago, and it's about a transgender person and I play the father. It's a comedy, it's very funny. I haven't got a massive part in it, but it's a lovely part. It's about a guy who decides he wants to become a woman, and he's going through the process, and he's got to tell his parents. And in the middle of all of this, a son turns up who he never knew he had.
"I think it's a really good film, and it's great that it's an LGBT film that's a comedy!"
'Colette' and 'Still Alice' director Wash Westmoreland fell in love with 2019's 'And Then We Danced.'
Wash Westmoreland, who directed Julianne Moore to a best actress Oscar win for "Still Alice," said: "One of my favorite movies of recent years was 'And Then We Danced' — Levan Akin's compelling story of forbidden love set in the super-homophobic environment of a Georgian dance academy. The film feels authentically post-soviet — they drink vodka, eat potatoes, and smoke a lot while we wait for the most repressed and deeply buried desires to emerge."
"This is not a place where people wave LGBTQ+ pride flags. But it shows the vital need for queer expression — as a way of declaring your own truth and perhaps changing the lives around you as you do it. A beautiful film — humanistic and social-realist and sexy. I tell everyone to watch it."
Craig Johnson, director of Netflix's 'Alex Strangelove,' loves all of Todd Haynes' filmography as well as 2017's 'Call Me By Your Name.'
Craig Johnson told Insider that the queer director Todd Haynes and his collective filmography constantly makes him "push the envelope" as a filmmaker himself.
"Each one of his movies feels like chapters in a queer or queer adjacent story. Specifically, my favourites are 'Safe' and 'Carol.' 'Carol' tells a more overt lesbian story, but 'Safe,' which is the story of a California housewife getting sick for no reason, has this subversion of queer sensibility and question of identity that I find really fascinating.
"Even his Bob Dylan movie, 'I'm Not There,' still has little touches that make it queer, like casting Cate Blanchett, and kind of f---ing with the definition of queer movies."
Johnson also has two specific queer movies that he cherishes — one from 1986 and one from 2017.
The '86 movie is "Parting Glances," the only film of director Bruce Sherwood who died in the early 1990s from AIDS.
"It's about a group of gay friends in New York. I was blown away by how much it felt like me and my friends in Los Angeles. It was such an authentic depiction of a group of gay friends. I couldn't tell you how many interactions in one party scene felt like me and my friends. It's a lovely delicate little film. Steve Buscemi [star] steals your gay little heart. I never thought I'd say those words."
The 2017 movie Johnson loves is "Call Me By Your Name," which he says is almost a cliché to say at this point because it's so revered.
"The impact of the movie, the beauty of it, the truthfulness, the relatability of a crush and the first sexual smouldering. Luca Guadagnino is probably the most sensual filmmaker working today.
"The sensuality of everything from yes Timothée and Armie together, but also the sun-dappled Italian countryside and the swims in the lakes and the music. I'm so glad it's such a cultural icon now, but I don't want that status to diminish how good of a movie it is."
Fiona MacKenzie is a big fan of the iconic 2005 movie 'Brokeback Mountain.'
Fiona MacKenzie, director of "Tell Me I Love You" — a joyous, recently-released indie comedy featuring leading queer characters, told Insider she is a fan of any and every film Oscar-winner Ang Lee does.
"I'm a huge fan of Ang Lee, literally everything he does. His career is so impressive to me — from 'Sense and Sensibility' to 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.'"
"Brokeback Mountain was outstanding," MacKenzie said. "Brokeback Mountain featured two of our leading men of the time in Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, and they both really went there emotionally. I thought that was fantastic."
However, MacKenzie is wary of too many queer movies, or films exploring LGBTQ themes, becoming overly tragic.
"When you think about it, these movies made movie stars out of their actors. 'Monster,' 'Philadelphia,' 'Brokeback Mountain.' Great films, but basically, people die. It's pretty dark. I suppose it's appealing to an actor, to go all the way there. But you also need the light-hearted comedy, which I think we do well."
'Beautiful Thing' from 1996 had a big impact on 'The Way He Looks' director Daniel Ribeiro.
Ribeiro, who recently directed three episodes of HBO's new queer TV series "Todxs Nós," told Insider: "The one movie I remember watching was 'Beautiful Thing,' which I remember watching with my boyfriend at the time and it was like 'oh my God, it's not just the both of us here, there are other people like us!' 'Beautiful Thing' was an important movie for me as a teenager."
Ribeiro said he has carried the experience of watching that movie with him through to his work as a filmmaker today.
"I don't know if I'm influenced by 'Beautiful Thing' or if 'Beautiful Thing' reflects who I was or who I am, but I definitely see the tenderness that there was in that in my work.
"I don't even remember the movie that well, but I remember the feelings that I had. There's this power to queer movies that's very important, especially to teenagers."
'Precious' director Lee Daniels had an awakening to 1990's 'Paris is Burning'
"Empire" creator and two-time Oscar-nominee Lee Daniels told Insider there are "different phases of queer cinema," and as a kid, Rogers & Hammerstein's 1957 version of "Cinderella" felt queer to him: "A good looking prince, Cinderella, the evil stepmother who could have been a nasty-ass drag queen. These are sensibilities that live in our minds, in our fabric."
"For me, and I lived it personally, 'Paris is Burning' was the first moment that I saw myself on screen, and I saw my friends on screen, and I saw the world as a young, black, queer person. That was powerful. That was an awakening to the realness of what those people, who were me, were like."
Broadway star Michael James Scott lives for 'Pose,' while the 'gay boy' in him loves 1995's 'Clueless.'
Scott, who owned the role of the Genie in Broadway's "Aladdin," referenced drag and vogue culture as a personal love for him, and "lives for" any film or TV show that explores or features those themes.
"'Paris is Burning' is an old school homage and documentary about the underground vogue culture, that was incredible, as Billy Porter in 'Pose,' 'Ru Paul's Drag Race' — I know a lot of those girls and that's so fun.
"The gay boy in me loves 'Clueless,' because it's just ridiculous and I live for some Alicia Silverstone, but I just binge-watched 'Hollywood,' Ryan Murphy's new show. That was interesting, and explores the idea of history rewritten."
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