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Best Lgbt Movies

Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of lgbt cinema — measured across 9,607 indexed frames from 143 films, against a 408,752-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.

Lgbt films over-index on cigarette, pillow and necklace — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.

  1. 1

    Maestro (2023)

    Bradley CooperDP Matthew LibatiqueIMDb 6.5TMDB 6.3See in full on FrameThrower →

    A towering and fearless love story chronicling the lifelong relationship between Leonard Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein. A love letter to life and art, Maestro at its core is an emotionally epic portrayal of family and love.

  2. 2

    Paris Is Burning (1990)

    Jennie LivingstonDP Paul GibsonIMDb 8.2TMDB 8.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    Where does voguing come from, and what, exactly, is throwing shade? This landmark documentary provides a vibrant snapshot of the 1980s through the eyes of New York City's African American and Latinx Harlem drag-ball scene. Made over seven years, PARIS IS BURNING offers an intimate portrait of rival fashion "houses," from fierce contests for trophies to house mothers offering sustenance in a world rampant with homophobia, transphobia, racism, AIDS, and poverty. Featuring legendary voguers, drag queens, and trans women — including Willi Ninja, Pepper LaBeija, Dorian Corey, and Venus Xtravaganza.

  3. 3

    Heartbeats (Les Amours Imaginaires) (2010)

    Xavier DolanDP Stéphanie Weber BironIMDb 7.0TMDB 7.1See in full on FrameThrower →

    Francis is a young gay man, Marie is a young straight woman and the two of them are best friends -- until the day the gorgeous Nicolas walks into a Montreal coffee shop. The two friends, instantly and equally infatuated, compete for Nicolas' indeterminate affections, a conflict that climaxes when the trio visit the vacation home of Nicolas' mother. The frothy comedy unfolds through narrative, fantasy sequences and confessional monologues.

  4. 4

    Anna (2019)

    Luc BessonDP Thierry ArbogastIMDb 6.7TMDB 6.7See in full on FrameThrower →

    Anna (Sasha Luss) is a young beautiful girl who managed to make a career in the fashion world. More recently, she was a simple model from Moscow, but in a very short time, she was able to enter the elite. Once she entered the hotel of an influential and very dangerous person, after which a whole mountain of corpses was discovered there. The girl is being interrogated by special services, but she has absolutely nothing to tell them on this fact. She looks scared, and no one suspects her. Anna goes free and begins preparing for a new business. Under the guise of a fragile beauty, is hiding the world's most dangerous assassin, who has not yet misfired.

  5. 5

    Red, White & Royal Blue (2023)

    Matthew LópezDP Stephen GoldblattIMDb 7.0TMDB 7.9See in full on FrameThrower →

    After an altercation between Alex, the president's son, and Britain's Prince Henry at a royal event becomes tabloid fodder, their long-running feud now threatens to drive a wedge in U.S./British relations. When the rivals are forced into a staged truce, their icy relationship begins to thaw and the friction between them sparks something deeper than they ever expected.

  6. 6

    Mysterious Skin (2004)

    Gregg ArakiDP Steve GainerIMDb 7.6TMDB 7.7See in full on FrameThrower →

    A gay teenage prostitute and another teen, both from the same small town in Kansas, narrate separate stories from their childhoods. The prostitute's story is about a disturbing homosexual encounter with his pedophile baseball coach, and the other teen's story revolves around an amnesia blackout during which he thinks he may have been abducted by aliens. Later, the second teen finds clues linking the gay prostitute (now living in New York City) to his possible alien abduction, so he tracks him down to finally seek out the truth.

  7. 7

    Blue Is The Warmest Colour (2013)

    Abdellatif KechicheDP Sofian El FaniIMDb 7.6TMDB 7.1See in full on FrameThrower →

    Adèle is a high school student who is beginning to explore herself as a woman. She dates men but finds no satisfaction with them sexually, and is rejected by a female friend who she does desire. She dreams of something more. She meets Emma who is a free spirited girl whom Adèle's friends reject due to her sexuality, and by association most begin to reject Adèle. Her relationship with Emma grows into more than just friends as she is the only person with whom she can express herself openly. Together, Adèle and Emma explore social acceptance, sexuality, and the emotional spectrum of their maturing relationship.

  8. 8

    Tomboy (2011)

    Céline SciammaDP Crystel FournierIMDb 7.4TMDB 7.3See in full on FrameThrower →

    A family moves into a new neighborhood, and a 10-year-old born Laure deliberately presents as a boy named Mickäel to the neighborhood children. It is heavily implied that Mickäel is a closeted transgender boy. This film follows his experiences with his newfound friends, his potential love interest, Lisa, his younger sister and his parents. It focuses in on the significance of gender identity in social interaction from an early age, the difficulties of being transgender and young, and how Mickäel navigates these in the background of childhood play and love.

  9. 9

    My Policeman (2022)

    Michael GrandageDP Ben DavisIMDb 6.5TMDB 7.6See in full on FrameThrower →

    In the late 1990s, the arrival of elderly invalid Patrick into Marion and Tom’s home triggers the exploration of seismic events from 40 years previous: the passionate relationship between Tom and Patrick at a time when homosexuality was illegal.

  10. 10

    The Danish Girl (2015)

    Tom HooperDP Danny CohenIMDb 7.1TMDB 7.6See in full on FrameThrower →

    Copenhagen, Denmark, 1926. Einar Wegener (played by Eddie Redmayne) and his wife Gerda (Alicia Vikander) are a happily married couple. Both are artists, Einar preferring landscapes and she portraits. One day Einar poses for a portrait of Gerda's while wearing a dress. This is initially done as a lark, as is the later attendance at a party dressed as a woman. However, Einar soon discovers that she is in fact a woman and over time prefers being Lili. At first she and Gerda try to have her situation "cured" but this leads nowhere (other than to many doctors trying to have Lili locked up as a pervert and/or lunatic). Her voyage of self-discovery will ultimately lead to her undergoing the first ever sex-change operation.

What lgbt films are made of

How much more often each element appears in a lgbt frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — cigarette is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.

  • cigarette2.4×
  • pillow1.8×
  • necklace1.6×
  • mirror1.6×
  • bed1.5×
  • t-shirt1.5×
  • sofa1.5×

How lgbt films are shot

Weaker signals than the objects above, and worth saying so: most dramatic genres skew dark and night-heavy, so these numbers separate lgbt from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.

  • 87%eye levelvs 69% baseline

What breaks the pattern

Nimona (2023) is the least typical film here — it carries the least of what the rest of this list is made of. Which is either a failure of the genre label, or the most interesting film on the page.

Method

Every frame in the FrameThrower catalogue is tagged for shot size, lighting, time of day, camera angle, colour and the objects visible in it. This page aggregates those tags across 9,607 frames from 143 films carrying the lgbt label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (408,752 frames). Films are ranked by how closely they match the theme’s over-indexed elements, weighted by how distinctive each element is; one film per series. Only films with at least 20 indexed frames and 500 TMDB votes are listed.

Machine-readable: /api/list/lgbt

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These are real movie frames, shown at reduced resolution. All rights remain with their respective owners; they appear here for study, commentary and education under fair-use principles. How these are meant to be used