If you don’t speak or understand Portuguese please do not be deterred from watching a film with subtitles, because this is a coming-of-age gay film that you do not want to miss. The film is warm, tender, and will challenge many notions you might have about what it means to be gay and be living with a disability. Leonardo (Ghilherme Lobo) is a blind high school student who becomes smitten with a new student in his class, Gabriel (Fabio Audi). The Way He Looks (in Portuguese: Hoje Eu Quero Voltar Sozinho) is a Brazilian romance drama that portrays what it’s like to come into your sexuality while living with a disability. Hopefully a remake will be able to get the nuances of sexual fluidity right. While it seems that Jessica is probably bisexual, her partner tells her she’s not “gay enough” to be with a woman. Kissing Jessica Stein offers an incredible portrayal of sexual fluidity, emotional self-discovery, and sexual exploration, but problems arise toward film’s end, when Jessica’s girl-loving side is threatened with becoming completely erased. On a whim she decides to answer a woman-seeking-woman personal ad in a newspaper. Starring and co-written by Jennifer Westfeldt, Kissing Jessica Stein examines the life of Jessica, a woman in her late 20s who is fed up with a monotonous desk job and dating life. For now, we rounded up 35 of our favorite LGBTQ movies, from a sapphic historical romance to a cheesy early-aughts coming out rom-com and everything in between.

With more queer-identifying filmmakers, actors, producers, and directors than ever before given the opportunity to share their stories, we can only expect more fantastic LGBTQ+ films in the future. While we’re a long way from total inclusivity and gay movies sans stereotypes, the film industry has made recent strides in centering LGBTQ+ characters. For marginalized groups, truthful representation in film is imperative, even lifesaving, and in today’s stormy political climate there’s an urgency for straight cisgender people to see LGBTQ characters portrayed accurately and unapologetically - and by people who actually know what LGBTQ life is like because they live it.

LGBTQ+ people have long been buried under tropes and unsubtle stereotypes in film and television. LGBTQ movies are a rarity - and accurately-portrayed queer characters in film even more so.

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