Favorite Queer Media

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.

8-years-old Oscar Madly became traumatized. Around the same time that his mother left their family (with Oscar firmly taking his dad's side), Oscar witnessed a gay hate crime at school that left the victim bloodied and permanently paralyzed. Ten years pass. Oscar, befriended by his talking hamster Buffy, wants to get into a special effects make-up school (using his friend Gemma as a model), and has come to realize his spiteful father's anti-social, immature short-comings. When Oscar meets co-worker Wilder at the hardware store, sexual feelings begin to stir but accompanied by severe stomach pains (the memory of the hate crime). A farewell costume party for Wilder brings Oscar's issues to a head, expressed sometimes in surreal terms.

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.

Nathan, 16, lives alone with his father Stephane. A newcomer in high school, he is invited to a party and falls in love with Louis, a boy in his class. They find themselves out of sight and kiss each other, but someone takes a picture of them. Soon, the photo is published on Facebook and a storm overtakes their lives as they face bullying and rejection.

A car mechanic in a small, working class town comes out of the closet to his unsuspecting, blue-collar best friends.

Generally absent French army rescue helicopter pilot Nathan Delille's teen son Damien Delille is the model student in his Alpine village school. He takes self-defense lessons from veteran neighbor Paolo, needed as non-provoking victim of class bully Thomas Chardoul, doting adopted son of petty cattle farmers Jacques and Christine Chardoul. Unaware and questioning that Damien is the innocent party when the principal, who guessed right, thus punishes both as fighters, his mother, local Dr. Marianne Delille, takes Thomas in after diagnosing his mother pregnant. The boys are forced to play friends, fight in secret, yet bond over confidences as closet gay Damien's grades slip due to a crush on Tom, who takes over a class champion thanks to home tutoring. They are separated as their now irrelevant fights come out, yet reunite intimately after a family tragedy.

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.

Leonardo is a blind teenager dealing with an overprotective mother while trying to live a more independent life. To the disappointment of his best friend, Giovana, he plans to go on an exchange program abroad. When Gabriel, a new student in town, arrives at their classroom, new feelings blossom in Leonardo making him question his plans.

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.

HENRY GAMBLE'S BIRTHDAY PARTY takes place over the course of 24 hours, at the 17th birthday pool party of preacher's kid Henry Gamble. As Henry treads through various sexual possibilities, seeking to come into his own, so too do the adults and teenagers of the party, all struggling to navigate the public and private, and their longing, despite themselves and their faith, for earthly love.

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.

This tenderly romantic film tells the story of Steve, a young boy in a at secondary school, as he struggles with coming out and falling in love with John, the top athlete at school - who, amazingly, falls in love with him as well.

Pim, the emotionally abandoned and affection-starved young gay son of a small seaside town's resident floozy, grows up dreaming intensely of a loving father who will someday come for him, but never does. Frequently home alone, Pim often spends time at a neighbor's house where another single mom and her two teenage children accept him matter-of-factly. As Pim is about to turn 15, he and neighbor boy Gino become each other's friend-with-benefits, entering a period of sexual awakening together. Life, however, is all about change, and while Gino (a couple years older) is ready to move on and move out, Pim is not, leaving Pim behind to carry on with his continuing crush for Gino (while Gino's sister Sabrina develops an unrequited crush for Pim).

On Manhattan's gilded Upper East Side, a young gay painter is torn between an obsession with his infamous socialite best friend and a promising new romance with an older foreign concert pianist.

In his final year in the Political Science program at college in Chicago, Sam Basilli is still recovering from the breakup with his last boyfriend, Malcolm, that breakup which resulted in him not only losing his lover but his best friend. Sam, not the type for one night stands, still vows never to date a friend to avoid such double blows. With regard to relationships, Sam's best female friend since first year, Stasia Cooper, conversely never considers herself to have a boyfriend regardless of what the outside world sees in she not believing in commitment. On the Valentine's weekend, Sam reluctantly agrees, as a favor to friends, to what he considers his worst nightmare in giving Harry Turpin a ride - nine hours - to their hometown, Harry, also a student at the same college, who tormented Sam all through high school for being gay. While Sam's initial impression of Harry is still the same - self-absorbed, adolescent minded, the type of guy that strings girlfriends along until it becomes too messy for him - it isn't until midway through their trip that Sam views Harry in a slightly different light on an admission: that Harry had long ago come out as being pansexual. That discovery at least leads to them having a more fulsome discussion about their lives on the remainder of the drive. With bumps along the way over the next few years, Sam and Harry teeter on the brink of friendship to being in that same vein of friend for Sam that Malcolm was and Stasia still is. As Sam develops even deeper feelings, he has to decide if he will break his vow not to date friends. In the end, generally controlled Sam may be taken over by emotions, both good and bad.