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Pride Month comes every June, and it is a great time to celebrate the history of LGBTQ+ cinema and watch great lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movies with your best queer friends.
Netflix, Prime Video, HBO Max and Hulu (as well as the other streaming services) offer dozens of new and classic LGBTQ+ movies to watch this month.
Hulu is leading the way with Fire Island, a hilarious-looking new gay rom-com starring some of the hottest queer talent working today. The other streaming services, meanwhile, have everything foundational trans documentaries to recent Oscar winners.
Here are 10 of the best LGBTQ+ films streaming this month on the major streaming services.
10 films to watch this Pride Month
Appropriate Behavior (Criterion Channel)
The bisexual canon is a fairly small one, but Desiree Akhavan's 2014 indie hit was an instant addition. With good queer relationship advice hard to find in this post-"Don't Say Gay" moment, there is a lot to empathize with in this story of a bisexual woman in Brooklyn left reeling after breaking up with her long-term girlfriend.
Bound (Paramount+)
Directed by leading trans directors the Wachowskis, Bound was the first sign that these were auteurs to watch before they made The Matrix. Starring Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon as two women who become sexually tied together as they plot a theft, Bound is one of the most erotically-charged lesbian films of the 1990s.
Desert Hearts (HBO Max)
A genuine trailblazer, Desert Hearts was the first major film with a positive lesbian relationship at its core to get a wide release in America. Without this story of two women falling in love in the rural Nevada of the 1950s, the history of lesbian cinema may have gone very differently.
Fire Island (Hulu, premiering June 3)
In 2022, we are getting not one but two gay-themed rom-coms from major studios (Billy Eichner's Bros comes later this year). We can grumble that it took this long, but we cannot hold that against this new take on Pride and Prejudice, set amid the gay hedonism of Fire Island.
The Handmaid (Prime Video)
Though directed by the straight Park Chan-Wook, The Handmaid's lesbian bona fides are established by the fact it is an adaptation of the seminal novel Fingersmith. Park moves the twisty-turny conman plot from Victorian London to early 20th-century South Korea, but loses none of its intensity.
Pariah (HBO Max)
The fight for LGBTQ+ representation in film has been hard fought. Though progress has been made, queer characters are still more likely to be white. Writer and director Dee Rees tries to change this with Pariah, her expertly-realised story of young Black lesbian life.
Paris Is Burning (Criterion Channel)
Not only a foundational LGBTQ+ film, but Paris is Burning is one of the best documentaries ever made. It tells the story of underground ball culture in the late '80s, and how its (mostly) Black and Latinx gay and trans participants try to survive in a racist and homophobic society. Paris is Burning's influences are everywhere in culture, to the extent that many forget where we first learned about voguing and "throwing shade." Change that by watching the movie this Pride Month.
The Power of the Dog (Netflix)
While it lost in the Best Picture category to Coda at the Oscars this year, The Power of the Dog will have the lasting cultural legacy. It may lack the explicit sexuality of some other films on this list, but it makes up for it in sheer homoerotic intensity.
Pride (Hulu)
In a world where some are trying to split the "T" from the "LGB," and where homophobic legislation is back on the book across the U.S., Pride's messages of solidarity and the need to speak out are more poignant than ever in 2022. The story of Britain's Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners group reminds us that Pride Month is not just a celebration, but a protest.
Tangerine (Netflix)
Across this, The Florida Project and Red Rocket director Sean Baker has proven himself to be a master in telling stories about Americans who rarely are seen on screen. Tangerine, however, remains his definitive film, a candy colored and riotous film starring two trans sex workers on a revenge mission. Few LGBTQ+ movies are as fun as this iPhone-shot odyssey.
