@ The Broadway!
A construction worker joins a community of queer rodeo performers searching for their own version of the American dream. While working on a ranch in the Southwest, they contend with the undeniable forces of nature, family and love.

The ever-magnificent late Robin Williams stars as a gay Miami nightclub owner whose son wants to introduce him to his super conservative in-laws-to-be.

Hilarity ensues (with Williams involved, how can it not?) as they attempt to portray a wholesome American family, with Williams’ drag queen partner posing as his wife – Mrs Doubtfire style. It is in fact a remake of the musical La Cage aux Folles, but this modern adaptation is a truly riotous comedy with an ultimately uplifting tale to boot.

“Go back and think what I would feel today as an out trans person if I had never seen any representation of myself in the media.”

Laverne Cox narrates this documentary about the history of trans representation onscreen, which features trans celebrities including Alexandra Billings, Trace Lysette, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, Zackary Drucker, Lilly Wachowski, and Ser Anzoategui discussing how (and, indeed, if) trans and gender-nonconforming people’s experiences in Hollywood have evolved over the past few decades. —ES

“I hereby christen this budget barbie camper Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.”

Full of enough feathers and fabulousness to make RuPaul jealous, you could be fooled for forgetting the historical and cultural importance this film holds. Following the AIDS epidemic of the Eighties, homophobia continued to infect society in the Nineties. That said, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert brought us a joyous, must-see classic of a film that put drag culture on the map in an era of TV and cinema that consistently misrepresented this marginalised community.

Two drag queens (Hugo Weaving and Guy Pearce) and a transgender woman (Terence Stamp) road trip across Australia in a tour bus (which they soon pimp out with some pink paint and christen Priscilla) to take their drag show to a resort in the middle of the Outback. Along the way they encounter hilarity and mishaps, but also homophobic abuse, all while uncovering new secrets about each other. See the film first, then catch the musical version that first graced the West End in 2011.

“Your presence is made of fleeting moments that may lack truth."

Céline Sciamma made her grandest romantic gesture to date with Portrait of a Lady on Fire, a period drama that mines extraordinary feeling from perfect restraint. In it, Noémie Merlant plays Marianne, an artist hired to paint the portrait of a young woman (Adèle Haenel) being married off to an Italian nobleman. Yet as the two women slowly form a friendship, that friendship gives way to a brief but passionate love affair—and some of the decade’s most astonishing filmmaking.

“I wish I knew how to quit you.”

If it’s a critically lauded, Oscar-smashing movie you’re after, Brokeback Mountain soared straight to the top of the LGBTQ+ film canon on its release and is credited with being the first major mainstream queer film. Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal portray two cowboys who meet in the Sixties and develop a secret, forbidden love for each other.

As we follow the two men throughout their lives, the shame around being openly gay in America at that time is so poignantly and heart-wrenchingly clear, it’s no wonder the cast and crew won a veritable army of Golden Globes, BAFTAs and Academy Awards, among many other accolades.