Queer classics: 21 essential LGBTQ films

Weekly collection in the app for the week of June 5, 2026.

Queer cinema spent half a century in code, Cocteau's poetry and Visconti's glances, then burst into the open and built a canon: Wong Kar-wai's Buenos Aires exiles, Sciamma's painters, Jenkins' Miami moonlight.

This collection of 21 films ran as the weekly theme in the I Like Movies Discover tab for the week of June 5, 2026, opening Pride month, featuring Matthew Warchus's Pride, the true story of London activists funding striking Welsh miners. Documentary (Paris Is Burning), melodrama (Carol), comedy (The Birdcage) and Almodóvar all get seats.

The collection

1. Pride (2014) Warchus Featured In 1984, London gay and lesbian activists raise money for striking Welsh miners, who are not sure they want it; a true story that builds to unions marching at Pride, and earns every tear. Cast: George MacKay, Ben Schnetzer, Freddie Fox
2. Orpheus (1950) Cocteau The Orpheus myth in postwar Paris: a famous poet follows a princess who is Death through mirrors into the underworld; Cocteau's poetry with radio cars and rubber gloves. Cast: Jean Marais, François Périer, María Casares
3. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) Sciamma On a Brittany island, a painter is hired to secretly portray a woman promised into marriage, and the watching becomes mutual; a love story built entirely on the exchanged gaze. Cast: Noémie Merlant, Adèle Haenel, Luàna Bajrami
4. Brokeback Mountain (2005) Lee Two young ranch hands fall into a love neither can name during a summer herding sheep, then spend twenty years meeting in stolen weeks while their marriages pay the price. Cast: Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams
5. Carol (2015) Haynes In 1952 New York, a young shop clerk and an elegant suburban wife begin a affair that the wife's divorce lawyers will use against her; longing conducted through glances and gloves. Cast: Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Kyle Chandler
6. Moonlight (2016) Jenkins A poor Black kid in Miami grows up in three chapters, child, teenager, hardened adult, shaped by a crack-addicted mother, an unlikely mentor and one boy on a beach; Best Picture winner. Cast: Trevante Rhodes, André Holland, Janelle Monáe
7. Call Me by Your Name (2017) Guadagnino In a sun-drunk Italian summer, a seventeen-year-old falls for the American graduate student staying at his family's villa; ends on one of the great father speeches and a long-held closeup. Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Armie Hammer, Michael Stuhlbarg
8. My Own Private Idaho (1991) Van Sant A narcoleptic street hustler searching for his mother drifts through Portland and Rome with the mayor's slumming son, in a road movie spliced with Shakespeare's Henry IV; River Phoenix's defining role. Cast: River Phoenix, Keanu Reeves, James Russo
9. Milk (2008) Van Sant Harvey Milk moves to San Francisco, builds a movement out of Castro Street, becomes the first openly gay elected official in California, and is assassinated by a fellow supervisor. Cast: Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin
10. Paris Is Burning (1990) Livingston Harlem's Black and Latino ballroom scene of the late 1980s: the houses, the categories, the invented families, and the dreams of members the era would not let live long. Cast: Pepper LaBeija, Octavia St. Laurent, Venus Xtravaganza
11. Happy Together (1997) Wong Kar-wai Two men from Hong Kong strand themselves in Buenos Aires, breaking up and starting over in cycles neither can escape; Wong Kar-wai's most bruising film about being far from home. Cast: Leslie Cheung, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Chang Chen
12. The Handmaiden (2016) Park Chan-wook A pickpocket is planted as handmaiden to a Japanese heiress to help a conman steal her fortune, but the women have plans of their own; a triple-crossing gothic told three times over. Cast: Kim Min-hee, Kim Tae-ri, Ha Jung-woo
13. Maurice (1987) Ivory Two Cambridge men fall in love in Edwardian England, where it is a crime; one chooses respectability, the other risks everything; Forster kept the novel unpublished in his lifetime for its happy ending. Cast: James Wilby, Hugh Grant, Rupert Graves
14. A Single Man (2009) Ford On the day he has decided will be his last, a grieving English professor in 1962 Los Angeles moves through his routine noticing everything; Colin Firth's finest hour. Cast: Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Nicholas Hoult
15. The Birdcage (1996) Nichols A gay Miami club owner and his drag-star partner play straight for one dinner because their son is marrying a senator's daughter; farce machinery in perfect working order. Cast: Robin Williams, Gene Hackman, Nathan Lane
16. Fox and His Friends (1975) Fassbinder A working-class carnival performer wins the lottery and is politely, systematically devoured by his elegant new boyfriend's circle; Fassbinder cast himself as the victim. Cast: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Peter Chatel, Karlheinz Böhm
17. Sebastiane (1976) Jarman Roman soldiers at a desert outpost turn on the devout Sebastian, whose martyrdom becomes indistinguishable from desire; dialogue entirely in Latin, Jarman's radical debut. Cast: Leonardo Treviglio, Barney James, Neil Kennedy
18. Death in Venice (1971) Visconti An ailing composer at a Lido hotel becomes fixated on a beautiful Polish boy as cholera spreads through Venice; Mahler on the soundtrack, dye running down a dying man's face. Cast: Dirk Bogarde, Björn Andrésen, Romolo Valli
19. The Way He Looks (2014) Ribeiro A blind Brazilian teenager chafing against his overprotective mother falls for the new boy at school; a first-love story of unusual gentleness. Cast: Ghilherme Lobo, Fábio Audi, Tess Amorim
20. Tomboy (2011) Sciamma New to the neighborhood, a ten-year-old spends the summer as Mikael, until school looms and the adults intervene; small, precise and ahead of its moment. Cast: Zoé Héran, Malonn Lévana, Jeanne Disson
21. All About My Mother (1999) Almodóvar After her son is killed, a Madrid nurse returns to Barcelona among actresses, trans sex workers and pregnant nuns to find his father; Almodóvar's Oscar-winning melodrama of chosen family. Cast: Cecilia Roth, Marisa Paredes, Candela Peña

Keep your place

Keep the canon on your I Like Movies watchlist, mark what you have seen, and rate as you go so the app learns what to recommend next. A new themed collection lands in the Discover tab every Friday.

Questions people ask

What is the best LGBTQ movie of all time?

Critics' polls usually put Moonlight, Carol, Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Happy Together near the top, and all four are in this collection. Where you start depends on whether you want tenderness (Moonlight) or fire (Portrait).

Why is Pride the featured film?

It is the collection's most joyful entry and a true story: London activists raised money for striking Welsh miners in 1984, and the unions marched at Pride the following year.

The week before: The long take: 21 films built on unbroken shots. The week after: Sports movies: 21 films beyond the final score. See every weekly theme, or browse every guide, watch order and comparison.