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Out gay actor Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, in a sensational performance, plays a once-successful jockey who reinvents himself as Dolores, a handbag-carrying man with a “watermelon” head. Still reeling from a recent near-death experience, Abraxa decides to resurrect the video game—a decision that draws all three back into one another’s orbit.
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Having freshly abandoned their gender, their name, and their corporate job, the unnamed narrator of Zee Carlstrom’s exhilarating debut is in the midst of a “bender to end all benders” when they learn that their conspiracy-theorist father has gone missing.
The set-up is stagey and very imagined: Hart is at the bar for the afterparty of the Broadway opening of “Oklahoma,” the musical sensation his former writing partner Richard Rodgers (an exasperated Andrew Scott) made with Oscar Hammerstein. Frank and forthcoming about a common disconnect in the LGBTQ dating pool, “Sauna” is rich in atmosphere but more importantly the chemistry of the leads.
BEST QUEER FILM: “Kill the Jockey” Bold, fabulous, and very queer, this absurdist Argentine import was one of the most original films this year. The documentary arrived last winter amid renewed national attacks on LGBTQ rights and countered the vitriol of that moment with a deeply empathetic portrait of genderqueer poet Andrea Gibson.
The annual Rendezvous with French Cinema program debuted the intriguing drama, “Foreign Tongue;” the Asian Film Festival offered the provocative “Bel Ami”; and the Chain NYC Festival showcased some terrific shorts, including “Larceny in the Heart,” and “Man Cured.” And, of course, NewFest in June and October provided a cornucopia of queer cinema. Is it about AI?
Colonialism? Creator Benito Skinner was inspired heavily by his own life — and pop culture obsessions — while making the series, which follows a teen named Benny as he heads off to Yates College and grapples with his sexuality. Over the summer, Pride marketing declined across major movie brands, and by the fall, streaming services had announced several cancellations of well-loved queer TV shows.
Bound together by desire, secrecy, and confused social necessity, the women of this dishy novel persist beyond author May Cobb’s pages into the Netflix adaptation by explosively translating layered radicalization. It’s a glossy, Southern-set thriller that leans hard into guns, sex, and red-state decadence. —WC
“Sauna”
Mathias Broe’s steamy (pardon the couldn’t-resist pun) Danish romance “Sauna” premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival as a modest gem in the World Cinema section — but the honest emotions it packs are anything but.
By centering familial partnership and artistic resilience in a time of hostility, “Come See Me in the Good Light” became more than a sensitive look at sickness and instead debuted as a rebellious and soft-hearted act of queer reflection. You know it’s unlikely to end well for these two, but it was such a lovely thing at that start.
—AF
“The Summer Hikaru Died”
Horror as a metaphor for queerness is a subject often relegated to subtext or academic discussions, which makes a show like “The Summer Hikaru Died,” which uses Lovecraftian horror conventions in service of a gay coming-of-age story, so radical and strange.
In a setting defined by cruelty, screenwriter JT Mollner understood that tenderness, especially between boys intended as enemies, can still seem radical on the big screen. Equal parts fashion Olympics, acting Super Bowl, and gay “Hunger Games,” Drag Race remains one of the few TV institutions where LGBTQ artistry isn’t debated or defended because it’s the main event.
His connection to protagonist Ray Garraty (Cooper Hoffman) is the emotional core of the film, non-romantic but deeply charged.