The 13 best queer films of 2023

Here & Queer is an interview series hosted by Peter Knegt that celebrates and amplifies the work of LGBTQ artists through unfiltered conversations. This is a special year end edition counting down the best queer films of 2023.

When history looks back at the movies of 2023, it is inevitable that the word that will dominate that conversation is, of course, “Barbenheimer.” Which technically is not a word but a portmanteau. But my point is that while that will be very well deserved, may I also suggest one more word — a real word, even — to join that conversation? Queer. Because I’m not sure I’ve ever witnessed a year quite so rich in queer cinema. And that gave me a lot of hope, which obviously hope was not easy to come by in 2023.  So I would like to celebrate this by doing what we do at the end of a year: I’ve made a list. 

If you are asking yourself why 13 and not 10 like every other list, may I just quickly state the obvious: the concept of a top 10 list is inherently straight. A top 13? That seems like the clear queer alternative. I mean, 13 is a very queer number: is it lucky or is it evil? I ask that question about myself every day. Also, it just so happens that 13 is the exactly the number of genuinely great LGBTQ films that were released in 2023.

13. Eileen

I don’t want to tell you too much about this film because there’s a real sharp turn but what I can safely tell you is that Anne Hathaway and Thomasin Mackenzie are absolutely serving in it as two women who meet cute at a prison in the 1960s. If you loved Todd Haynes’s Carol but also wished it was more sinister and unhinged, this is the film for you!

12. The Stroll

The history of New York City’s Meatpacking District is told through the voices of the transgender women of colour who lived it in Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker’s incredibly illuminating documentary. We’re shown how before the neighbourbood became gentrified by the Samantha Joneses of this world, trans women of colour lived, worked, loved and died on its streets. What culminates is one of the many films this year that felt like essential new entries in the burgeoning canon of trans cinema. For more on The Stroll, watch Kristen Lovell’s episode of Here & Queer.

11. Of An Age

Macedonian-Australian filmmaker Goran Stolevski is one of the most exciting new queer voices in world cinema, and his second feature Of An Age continued to prove that. Set in the summer of 1999, it follows an intense 24 hour romance between a closeted teenager and the older brother of his ballroom dance partner. It’s a sweet and sexy and deeply romantic ode to what it feels like not just to fall in love for the first time but to be seen for the first time. For more on Of An Age, read my interview with Goran Stolevski. 

10. Orlando: My Political Biography

Esteemed queer philosopher Paul B. Preciado made his first film this year with Orlando: My Political Biography… and what a bold and inventive blurring of reality and fiction it was.  Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s 94 year old novel Orlando, Preciado brings together 26 trans and non-binary people, aged 8 to 70, to reflect on their identities as each trade places as  the title character. The film feels like a manifesto for our times. For more on Orlando: My Political Biography, watch Paul B. Preciado’s episode of Here & Queer.

9. Dicks: The Musical

Imagine The Parent Trap but as a musical with… flying vaginas, sewer boys and Bowen Yang playing god. That is in essence, Dicks: The Musical… a film unlike anything you’ll see this year (or any year, really), and delivers us two major queer voices in its writers and stars Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson. It is also certainly not for everyone. But for those who have the taste for Dicks? Lube up! For more on Dicks, read my interview with Sharp and Jackson.

8. Bottoms

Do you know what comes after Dicks? Bottoms. Sorry, send me to jail for that. But seriously, these two films were collectively my Barbenheimer, with Bottoms being the Heimer. It was the queer high school comedy I have been waiting for and it was delivered to us by a great queer Canadian, no less: director Emma Seligman. Asburb and audacious and wildly unapologetic, this movie needs to be played regularly in rep cinemas until the end of time. Better yet, we need Dicks/Bottoms double features until the end of time.

7. Mutt

Okay so not only is this my favourite debut film from a queer director this year, but Mutt also features my favourite debut performance from a queer actor. Director Vuk Lungulov-Klotz and star Lío Mehiel come together in this film to offer us a really visceral window into a day in the life of a trans man, and what it feels for him to move through life in the midst of his transition. For more on Mutt, watch Vuk Lungulov-Klotz’s episode of Here & Queer.

6. Rotting in the Sun

So if this list was solely ranked by the amount of onscreen penises or graphic gay sex, there would be no doubt #1 would be bestowed upon Sebastián Silva’s Rotting in the Sun. But this movie is also much more than just the sum of all its penises. It’s a biting satire of class, queer culture and filmmaking itself, and features one of the best comedic performances of the year from social media star Jordan Firstman.

5. Monster

So this intensely compassionate movie — which won the Queer Palm for best LGBTQ film at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival — demands a lot of us. Directed by legendary Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda, it is also best going into it knowing as little as possible about what’s to come. Because watching this film kinda feels like putting together an intricate, beautiful and very queer puzzle, and the emotional payoff when you finally put that puzzle together is… astounding. 

4. Anatomy of a Fall

So French filmmaker Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall made it very clear this year that the time has come for us to ascend Sandra Huller to a very special status among actresses that gay men around the world worship. I’m talking Cate Blanchett level. Because she is so unbelievably good as a bisexual woman on trial for the death of her husband in this movie. A movie that is just so masterful and riveting and intelligent I still haven’t quite gotten over it. 

3. Passages

I trust few filmmakers to examine our sexual and emotional impulses as much as I do Ira Sachs, who gave us something so special this year with Passages. I felt so upended by this film, which follows a filmmaker who leaves his husband for a woman. I was honestly kinda frightened in how much it nails selfishness I’ve experienced in myself and others. And at the same time it is also somehow…so hot. 

2. All of Us Strangers

Okay, so do I even talk about this movie without crumbling into myself? Let me try: All of Us Strangers is writer and director Andrew Haigh basically giving us the ultimate cinematic expression of gay devastation. It says so much in such an achingly beautiful way, in large part thanks performances by Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal that just annihilated me. And oh, have I mentioned that it is kind of about ghosts? And with that I have already said too much. For more on All of Us Strangers, read my interview with Scott and Mescal.

1. May December

We have finally arrived at the greatest queer film of 2023, and I suspect some of you may be asking: why is this movie about a bunch of seemingly straight people the #1 queer film of the year. Well, first and foremost it is a film by Todd Haynes, perhaps the greatest queer filmmaker of our time. It also just feels undeniably queer in so many ways, from its general sensibility to its themes of interchanging identities to the fact that at one point the camera zooms in on Julianne Moore saying “I don’t think we have enough hot dogs.” It’s also just such an intricate and hilarious masterwork of tonal manipulation that could have only been pulled off by Haynes and thus only by a queer filmmaker. 

And there you have it, the 13 best queer films of 2023. Please feel free to disagree with me all you want in the comments of the YouTube video (and in case you’re curious, yes, I have seen Saltburn, Maestro, The Color Purple, Rustin and Nyad: they aren’t here because of varying degrees me thinking they were not deserving to be!). I welcome it, as I do another year of great queer cinema.