Best Queer Stuff

It's 1998 and New York City is in a state of intense flux when documentary filmmaker Erik Rothman (Thure Lindhardt) first meets Paul Lucy (Zachary Booth), a handsome but closeted lawyer in the publishing field. What begins as a highly charged first encounter soon becomes something much more, and a relationship quickly develops. As the two men start building a home and life together, each continues to privately battle their own compulsions and addictions. A film about sex, friendship, intimacy, and--most of all--love, Keep the Lights On takes an honest look at the nature of relationships in our times.

Tobi and Achim, the pride of the local crew club, have been the best of friends for years and are convinced that nothing will ever stand in the way of their friendship. They look forward to the upcoming summer camp and the crew competition. Achim's girlfriend Sandra is on the girl's team and he enjoys spending more time with her. Tobi becomes increasingly skeptical of their relationship. Anke, the pretty girl who has fallen for Tobi, doesn't make things any easier, then the gay team from Berlin arrives and Tobi is totally confused. The storm that breaks out the evening before the race begins is more than meteorological in this sensitive story about the complexities of growing up.

Spring. Yorkshire. Isolated young sheep farmer Johnny Saxby numbs his daily frustrations with binge drinking and casual sex, until the arrival of a Romanian migrant worker Gheorghe, employed for the lambing season, ignites an intense relationship that sets Johnny on a new path.

BOYS tells the story of Sieger, a sporty, rather quiet 15-year-old boy who discovers love during the summer holidays. Sieger is training in the new athletics team for the national relay championships and meets the intriguing and unpredictable Marc. The friendship that develops seems nothing out of the ordinary, but Sieger secretly harbours stronger feelings for Marc. He engages in a lonely struggle with himself when it emerges that Marc is also in love with him. With his best friend Stef, Sieger discovers a motocross track outside the village. Events soon take on a momentum of their own as Sieger quickly becomes involved with Jessica. At last, he counts for something in the eyes of his tough older brother Eddy, who is secretly using the track to tear around on a moped. Sieger keeps quiet about this to his father, who often clashes with the rebellious Eddy since their mother's death. Sieger tries to make peace between the two, but his mind is elsewhere, as he finds it increasingly difficult to deny his feelings for Marc.

Franky Winter has long been best friends with his high school classmate, Ballas Kohl, much like their parents, Carly and Ray Winter and Angie and Nic Kohl, have been friends. Ray though is now the odd person out since the recent divorce when he realized he was in love with a man, his current partner Brendan. Franky and Ballas are among the popular group of students, and are on the school swim team together, Ballas being the team captain. While Ballas has just started a sexual relationship with Jessica, Franky in turn could have his choice of any girl - at least according to the scuttlebutt provided to him by his friend Mouse, a boy trapped in a girl's body, from what she overhears in the girls' washroom. But Franky has chosen to date Cil (Priscilla), they planning to have their first sexual encounter the night of his seventeenth birthday party. Franky's first was almost Ballas' younger sister, Tash, who has just returned to school following "the incident" for which she is now labeled a slut and she is now sneaking alcohol to cope. When Franky and Cil's planned post-party sexual encounter falls through at the last minute, Franky and Ballas end up having a drunken bros' night out after the party, which leads to the start of a sexual encounter between the two of them. Word of this encounter begins to circulate among their classmates. Franky is painted as the gay one and is shunned by his so-called friends, including Cil and Ballas, because of it. In the process, Franky not only has to address his own sexual feelings in their entirety, but also the homophobia he displays against his father, with whom Franky chooses not to have much of a relationship.

Nimer and Roy are two gay men on opposing sides of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict who fall for each other. Much as they'd like to be left alone, both political conflict and orthodox beliefs will not leave their budding relationship untouched, with most of the egregious circumstances befalling Nimer, whom security forces pressure into helping them by stripping his access to education and threatening to leave him without family. Through his eye-witnessed death of a friend, Nimer knows he can't oblige. Can love find a way through this no-win situation?

Having moved to Paris for university, Leevi returns to his native Finland for the summer to help his estranged father renovate the family lake house so it can be sold. Tareq, a recent asylum seeker from Syria, has been hired to help with the work, and when Leevi's father has to return to town on business, the two young men establish a connection and spend a few days discovering one another during the Finnish midsummer.

With a promising police career and a baby on the way, Marc's life seems to be right on track - then he meets fellow policeman Kay. During their regular jogs, Marc experiences a never-before-felt sense of ease and effortlessness - and what it means to fall in love with another man. Torn between his family and his new feelings for Kay, Marc sees his world careening more and more out of control. Suddenly, his life is in free fall and Marc realizes that, try as he may, he can't make everyone happy - least of all himself.

Boys (Jonas) is a mystery told in two separate timelines. In the first, it's 1997 and Jonas is entering 9th grade. A new boy in school immediately catches his eye. Perhaps it's the bad-boy scar on his cheek or his devil-may-care attitude, but Jonas is smitten. The two boys quickly become friends and before long are skipping class to kiss in an empty gymnasium. In the film's other timeline, it's 2015 and the excitement of a teenager in love has been replaced with the sorrow of a man who can't escape the past. The adult version of Jonas (Félix Maritaud, outstanding in this year's sexually graphic Sauvage and last year's ImageOut favorite BPM) is a broken man. His boyfriend has thrown him out for cheating on him a few too many times, and he's been arrested for getting into a fight at Boys, a local gay bar. There's something about the bar that seems to set him off. He meanders through life still carrying that same old Game Boy, trying to fill a hole that can't be filled. So what happened to turn this innocent teenager into the sad, angry man that we see now? Boys (Jonas) is an engrossing mystery that will keep you guessing from the first minute to the last. As it moves back and forth between its two timelines, the film succeeds as both a sweet coming-of-age love story and a dark suspense thriller. As these two perfectly-told stories intertwine, it makes for a totally unique and truly special cinematic experience. -- Stephen K. Weisenreder

After a summer spent with his his best friend Kat to escape his family, Phil goes back to school and starts to question his feelings towards Nicholas, a new classmate.

Two male English school chums find themselves falling in love at Cambridge. To regain his place in society, Clive gives up his forbidden love, Maurice (pronounced "Morris") and marries. While staying with Clive and his shallow wife, Anne, Maurice finally discovers romance in the arms of Alec, the gamekeeper. Written from personal pain, it's E.M. Forster's story of coming to terms with sexuality in the Edwardian age.

In "Prayers for Bobby," Mary Griffith (

Patrick returns to San Francisco in search of closure and resolution regarding his relationships with Richie and Kevin.

Gewoon Vrienden (Just Friends) is a romantic comedy. The tough Joris doesn't come loose from his mother who is addicted to plastic surgery. Medical student Yad has snorted too much of various drugs and returns to his strict mother. Yad works as a domestic help for the grandmother of Joris. There they meet and they fall in love immediately, but before they can surrender to their love, they first have to balance things with their mothers.

On a Friday night after a drunken house party with his straight mates, Russell heads out to a gay club, alone and on the pull. Just before closing time he picks up Glen but what's expected to be just a one-night stand becomes something else, something special. That weekend, in bars and in bedrooms, getting drunk and taking drugs, telling stories and having sex, the two men get to know each other. It is a brief encounter that will resonate throughout their lives. Weekend is both an honest and unapologetic love story between two guys and a film about the universal struggle for an authentic life in all its forms. It is about the search for identity and the importance of making a passionate commitment to your life.

Tim and John fell in love while teenagers at their all-boys high school. John was captain of the rugby team, Tim an aspiring actor playing a minor part in Romeo and Juliet. Their romance endured for 15 years to laugh in the face of everything life threw at it - the separations, the discrimination, the temptations, the jealousies and the losses - until the only problem that love can't solve tried to destroy them.

Nineteen-year-old Jason and Ade have been in the Academy of a famous London football club since they were eight years old. It's the night before their first-ever game for the first team - a Champions League match - and they're in a hotel room in Romania. They should be sleeping, but they're over-excited. They skip, fight, mock each other, prepare their kit, watch a teammate's sex tape - and then, out of nowhere, one of them kisses the other. The impact of this 'pass' reverberates through the next ten years of their lives - a decade of fame and failure, secrets and lies, in a sporting world where image is everything.

A tender love story set during a hot summer on a South-East London housing estate. Jamie, a relatively unpopular lad who bunks off school to avoid football, lives next door to Ste, a more popular athletic lad but who is frequently beaten up by his father and older brother. Such an episode of violence brings Jamie and Ste together: Sandra (Jamie's mum) offers refugee to Ste, who has to 'top-and-tail' with Jamie. Hence, the story tells of their growing attraction for one another, from initial lingering glances to their irrefutable love, which so magnificently illustrated at the end of the film. It deals with the tribulations of coming to terms with their sexuality and of others finding out, in light of Sandra's unwavering loyalty and defence of Jamie and the fear of repercussion should Ste's family find out. The plot is set against sub-texts of Sandra's desire to manage her own pub, and thus escape the estate, and of her new relationship with her hippy boyfriend Tony; and of Leah, the brassy girl next door who has been expelled from school and spends her time listening to Mama Cass records and tripping on a variety of drugs.