WATCH GREAT CINEMA

Winner of Un Certain Regard at Cannes, Diego Céspedes’s debut feature pays luminous tribute to human resilience in inhumane times. Equal parts Chilean Western, dark fairy tale, and chosen-family hangout movie, this gorgeous work of queer magical realism finds love thriving amid sickness and hatred.

Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor star in this nostalgic, aching romance, lifting a profound story of yearning in exquisitely tender performances. Interweaving timeless folk tunes with sumptuous, autumnal images, director Oliver Hermanus chronicles a love whose reverberations are felt for a lifetime.

Writer-director Carmen Emmi handcuffs obsession to power in this confident debut set in ‘90s New York, detecting erotic fixations in homophobic policing. With one furtive eye on William Friedkin’s cult classic Cruising, Plainclothes searches fuzzy videotape surveillance footage for forbidden desire.

With this orgiastic immersion in the mystic reveries of a real-life historical figure, the king of the erotic thriller Paul Verhoeven gives the nunsploitation flick a high-art makeover. Elegant, perverse, and teasingly scandalous, Benedetta critiques religious hypocrisy with an impish grin.

Winner of the 1993 Palme d’Or, Chen Kaige’s widescreen epic draws on the classical theater for its expansive vision. Its modern take on taboos surrounding homosexuality and gender performativity— a first in Chinese cinema—was not without controversy: a queer, epoch-spanning masterpiece for the ages.

Taking copyrighted characters for a joyride, Vera Drew’s inventive take on the superhero film bounces between different visual styles, including dynamic animation and puppetry. Basking in the thrill of pastiche, this daring debut keenly expresses the trans experience through the lens of pop culture.

Director Levan Akin centers the vital spirit of Istanbul’s trans community in this poignant story of unlikely connection. With three exquisite performances that vividly transcend generational divides, Crossing is a defiant city symphony and a compassionate tale of hope, identity, and forgiveness.