The 83rd annual Golden Globes awards are set for Sunday (CBS, 8 p.m. EST). One of the many bright spots this awards season is “Hedda,” a unique LGBTQ version of the classic Henrik Ibsen story, “Hedda Gabler,” starring powerhouses Nina Hoss, Tessa Thompson and Imogen Poots. A modern reinterpretation of a timeless story, the film and its cast have already received several nominations this awards season, including a Globes nod for Best Actress for Thompson.

Writer/director Nia DaCosta was fascinated by Ibsen’s play and the enigmatic character of the deeply complex Hedda, who in the original, is stuck in a marriage she doesn’t want, and still is drawn to her former lover, Eilert. 

But in DaCosta’s adaptation, there’s a fundamental difference: Eilert is being played by Hoss, and is now named Eileen.

“That name change adds this element of queerness to the story as well,” said DaCosta at a recent Golden Globes press event. “And although some people read the original play as Hedda being queer, which I find interesting, which I didn’t necessarily…it was a side effect in my movie that everyone was queer once I changed Eilert to a woman.”

She added: “But it still, for me, stayed true to the original because I was staying true to all the themes and the feelings and the sort of muckiness that I love so much about the original work.”

Thompson, who is bisexual, enjoyed playing this new version of Hedda, noting that the queer love storyline gave the film “a whole lot of knockoff effects.”

“But I think more than that, I think fundamentally something that it does is give Hedda a real foil. Another woman who’s in the world who’s making very different choices. And I think this is a film that wants to explore that piece more than Ibsen’s.”

DaCosta making it a queer story “made that kind of jump off the page and get under my skin in a way that felt really immediate,” Thompson acknowledged.

“It wants to explore sort of pathways to personhood and gaining sort of agency over one’s life. In the original piece, you have Hedda saying, ‘for once, I want to be in control of a man’s destiny,’” said Thompson.

“And I think in our piece, you see a woman struggling with trying to be in control of her own. And I thought that sort of mind, what is in the original material, but made it just, for me, make sense as a modern woman now.” 

It is because of Hedda’s jealousy and envy of Eileen and her new girlfriend (Poots) that we see the character make impulsive moves.

“I think to a modern sensibility, the idea of a woman being quite jealous of another woman and acting out on that is really something that there’s not a lot of patience or grace for that in the world that we live in now,” said Thompson.

“Which I appreciate. But I do think there is something really generative. What I discovered with playing Hedda is, if it’s not left unchecked, there’s something very generative about feelings like envy and jealousy, because they point us in the direction of self. They help us understand the kind of lives that we want to live.”

Hoss actually played Hedda on stage in Berlin for several years previously.

“When I read the script, I was so surprised and mesmerized by what this decision did that there’s an Eileen instead of an Ejlert Lovborg,” said Hoss. “I was so drawn to this woman immediately.”

The deep love that is still there between Hedda and Eileen was immediately evident, as soon as the characters meet onscreen.

“If she is able to have this emotion with Eileen’s eyes, I think she isn’t yet because she doesn’t want to be vulnerable,” said Hoss. “So she doesn’t allow herself to feel that because then she could get hurt. And that’s something Eileen never got through to. So that’s the deep sadness within Eileen that she couldn’t make her feel the love, but at least these two when they meet, you feel like, ‘Oh my God, it’s not yet done with those two.’’’

Onscreen and offscreen, Thompson and Hoss loved working with each other.

“She did such great, strong choices…I looked at her transforming, which was somewhat mesmerizing, and she was really dangerous,” Hoss enthused. “It’s like when she was Hedda, I was a little bit like, but on the other hand, of course, fascinated. And that’s the thing that these humans have that are slightly dangerous. They’re also very fascinating.”

Hoss said that’s what drew Eileen to Hedda.  

“I think both women want to change each other, but actually how they are is what attracts them to each other. And they’re very complimentary in that sense. So they would make up a great couple, I would believe. But the way they are right now, they’re just not good for each other. So in a way, that’s what we were talking about. I think we thought, ‘well, the background story must have been something like a chaotic, wonderful, just exploring for the first time, being in love, being out of society, doing something slightly dangerous, hidden, and then not so hidden because they would enter the Bohemian world where it was kind of okay to be queer and to celebrate yourself and to explore it.’”

But up to a certain point, because Eileen started working and was really after, ‘This is what I want to do. I want to publish, I want to become someone in the academic world,’” noted Hoss.

Poots has had her hands full playing Eileen’s love interest as she also starred in the complicated drama, “The Chronology of Water” (based on the memoir by Lydia Yuknavitch and directed by queer actress Kristen Stewart).

“Because the character in ‘Hedda’ is the only person in that triptych of women who’s acting on her impulses, despite the fact she’s incredibly, seemingly fragile, she’s the only one who has the ability to move through cowardice,” Poots acknowledged. “And that’s an interesting thing.”

There’s something about a calendar milestone that seems to demand the making of lists.

Whether it’s a list of resolutions for the future or a list of high points for the past, we are happy to oblige – so as we move past the first quarter of our current century, here’s our list of the top 25 queer films since the end of the last one, listed in order of their release, and chosen through a blended consideration of overall critical consensus, cultural impact, and yes, individual tastes.

Our picks might not be the same as yours, because taste is always subjective, so look at this as an invitation to celebrate your favorites by making a list of your own!

Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001)

John Cameron Mitchell’s screen adaptation of his own genderqueer musical about a third-rate rock singer with a botched sex-change made his jubilantly rebellious off-Broadway hit accessible to uncountable queer audiences – for whom its comically-tortured pseudo-autobiographical tale of empowerment through self-expression felt like “being seen” – and the rest is history. 

Mulholland Drive (2001)

Late revered auteur David Lynch’s neo-noir Hollywood mystery – delivered in his famously incomprehensible style – is also a film that strongly centers a same-sex love affair between a naive Hollywood-hopeful actress (Naomi Watts) and the darker, more worldly woman (Laura Herring) with whom she becomes entangled. While their relationship may transmute throughout Lynch’s hallucinatory narrative, it remains the unequivocal emotional core of the film.

Bad Education (2004)

Renowned queer Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar scored a career high point with this boldly imaginative cinematic melodrama in which a gay film director (Fele Martínez) is reunited with a friend and lover (Gael García Bernal) from boarding school, who has written a script based on the story of their youthful relationship. A breathtaking exploration of a story’s evolution through many retellings – and of cinema’s power to illuminate the human truth behind it.

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

What can we say that hasn’t already been said? Ang Lee’s exquisitely heart-rending adaptation of Anne Proulx’s tale of two cowboys in love smashed open doors for queer storytelling in “mainstream” cinema and perfectly captured the agony of impossible longing that so many people in the rainbow community know all too well. Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal will forever be the litmus test for true allyship, thanks to their fearless commitment to the validity of a love that simply can’t be “quit.”

Shortbus (2006)

John Cameron Mitchell makes a second appearance on our list for directing this controversial, groundbreaking dramedy featuring intertwined love stories – queer and otherwise – around an underground Manhattan “salon” hosted by Justin Vivian Bond. Featuring explicit scenes of un-simulated sex in a gently satirical commentary on the struggle to connect in a post-millennial world, it pushed boundaries while also validating an open view toward sexuality, relationships, and identity itself.

Pariah (2011)

Dee Rees’s drama about a Black lesbian teen (Adepero Oduye) coming to terms with her identity was a landmark of representation, amplifying both the struggle of queer people facing homophobia from within their own community and the self-empowerment that comes with embracing who you are.

Weekend (2011)

Gay British filmmaker Andrew Haigh made an impressive breakthrough with this romance about two gay Londoners (Tom Cullen and Chris New) who fall in love during a one-night stand, filmed with a mix of scripted structure and improvised performance to capture an eminently relatable queer portrait of the kind of fleeting connection that stays with us for a lifetime.

Stranger by the Lake (2013)

This erotic thriller from French filmmaker Alain Guiraudie channels Hitchcock at his most perverse for its story of a “cruiser” at a nude gay lakeside beach (Pierre Deladonchamps) who becomes infatuated with a man who may or may not be a serial murderer (Christophe Paou). Scary, sexy, and utterly hypnotic, there’s a reason it’s frequently named as one of the best queer horror films of all time.

Carol (2015)

Iconic queer filmmaker Todd Haynes has scored several hits this century, but most impactful of all is his adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s midcentury lesbian romance between a married woman (Cate Blanchett) and a shopgirl (Rooney Mara), which breaks radical ground by imagining the possibility of a happy ending for queer love in an era that represses it.

Tangerine (2015)

Future “Anora” Oscar-winner Sean Baker made his breakthrough with this gritty, iPhone-filmed dramedy about two trans sex workers on an all-night quest in the streets of Hollywood. Shot on iconic location and boasting the raw authenticity of real-life trans performers Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor, each of whom knew the “streetlife” of the movie firsthand, it represented a huge advancement in the way trans stories were depicted onscreen while revolutionizing the independent film scene with its DIY audacity.

Moonlight (2016)

Barry Jenkins’ adaptation of Tarell McCraney’s play about a closeted young Black man growing up in the crack-blighted projects of Miami became a landmark of queer cinema by winning the Best Picture Oscar, but its real accomplishment lies in its three-act depiction of coming to terms with queer sexuality in an environment of social disadvantage, entrenched homophobia, and limited opportunity for escape. An unequivocal masterpiece.

BPM (Beats per Minute) (2017)

French filmmaker Robin Campanello crafted this urgently contemporary historical drama about AIDS activism of the 1990s, based on his own real-life experiences as a member of the Parisian chapter of ACT UP, and the result is a thrilling portrait of shared community commitment – and heartbreak – that feels like the most powerful documentary you’ve ever seen.
 

Call Me by Your Name (2017)

Luca Guadagnino’s coming-of-age romance between a teen boy (an incandescent Timothée Chalamet)  and his father’s grad student assistant (Armie Hammer) in Tuscany of the early 1980s may have sparked some controversy over the supposed inappropriateness of the age gap between its onscreen lovers and later revelations about Hammer’s real-life inclinations, but this James Ivory-scripted distillation of the pangs of first queer love transcends all that to become an irresistibly potent masterwork – and touchstone – that gives eloquent voice to both a sense of queer longing and a spirit of pastoral bliss that we all know will always be too good to last.

God’s Own Country (2017)

Often (and perhaps unfairly) characterized as a sort of companion piece to “Brokeback Mountain,” this first directorial effort by UK filmmaker Francis Lee depicts a romance between a young sheep farmer (Josh O’Connor) and the Romanian immigrant worker (Alec Secăreanu) he hires to help him after his father is sidelined by a stroke. In this case, however, the obstacles to their union come from internalized homophobia, not from outside judgments, and the trope of an unhappy ending for queer lovers is – tentatively, at least – rejected for a palpable sense of hope. It’s a small shift, perhaps, but the impact is huge.

The Favourite (2018)

Greek absurdist filmmaker Yorgos Lanthomos won accolades for this historical drama about lesbian power struggles in the 18th-century court of Britain’s Queen Anne (Oscar-winner Olivia Colman), who plays two would-be mistresses (Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz) against each other in a Machiavellian competition for royal favor and the power that goes with it. Consistently appalling and frequently grotesque in its portrait of weaponized proximity to power, it’s as uncomfortably funny as it is radically feminist in its portrayal of forced female enmity in a society still governed by masculine standards, even when a woman holds the dominant position.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2018)

This French historical drama from Céline Sciamma might seem at first glance as if it were merely another iteration of the period lesbian romance that has become almost a cliche, but it transcends the tropes to assert a message of feminist rebellion against the male-dominated societal norms – magnified by its 18th century setting – which would dismiss and devalue the inner experience of women, and leaves us all wanting to see “The Patriarchy” burned to the ground.

Neptune Frost (2021)

In this singularly genre-defying musical romance from Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman, magical Afrofuturist realism collides with dystopian tech-driven sci-fi for a story of romance between an intersex Burundi refugee (Cheryl Isheja / Elvis Ngabo) and a rebellious coltan miner (Bertrand “Kaya Free” Ninteretse), blending elements of cosmic spirituality with brutally oppressive political reality to create a visually striking modern-day myth, rooted in African tradition and lore, that incorporates the struggle for queer identity into a larger battle against a shadowy over-class that uses technology to force the people into economic slavery. Palpably weird and unrepentantly radical, it speaks – and sings – truth to power in a way that most modern films could simply never imagine.

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

This multi-Oscar-winning surprise hit from the filmmaking team known collectively as “The Daniels” (Kwan and Schwienert are their real-life surnames) might be a brilliantly absurdist action comedy about a war for the fate of the multiverse, but it’s built around the struggle of an Asian-American mother (Michelle Yeoh) to reconcile her strained relationship with her queer daughter (Stephanie Hsu) and come to terms with her disillusionment over her devoted but seemingly incompetent husband (Ke Huy Quan) – all while negotiating her tax returns with a no-nonsense IRS agent (Jamie Lee Curtis) who may have been her lesbian lover in another reality. It might take a collective effort from dozens of alternative timelines, but the fight is definitely worth it, in the end.

Fire Island (2022)

Director Andrew Ahn teamed with writer/star Joel Kim Booster for this modernized gay adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice” in which Jane Austen’s 19th-century social commentary is reframed in the world of queer culture, highlighting the class differences between economic and social status, and amplifying the experience of Asian-American males in the white-centric queer heirarchy of the contemporary age. It sounds like a stretch, but it’s a more authentically heartfelt – and unapologetically intelligent – queer romcom than the much-touted “Bros,” which debuted the same year to a dishearteningly meager box office take.

Tar (2022)

Acclaimed Kubrick protege Mike Field’s third movie is this ethically challenging drama starring Cate Blanchett as a renowned lesbian conductor targeted by “cancel culture” over her history of predatory sexual misconduct. An alternately bemusing and horrifying portrait of toxic behavior and a culture more interested in passing judgment than addressing inequities, it’s an uncompromisingly detached cautionary tale about female power in a world still governed by patriarchal standards, with Blanchett’s flawless performance as the glue that holds it all together.

All of Us Strangers (2023) Andrew Haigh makes a second appearance on our list as writer/director of this haunting adaptation of a novel by Japanese author Taichi Yamada, in which a lonely screenwriter (Andrew Scott) revisits his childhood home to commune with his long-dead parents (Jamie Bell, Claire Foy) while navigating a tentative new relationship with a melancholy neighbor (Paul Mescal) in his strangely deserted apartment building. Part ghost story, part melancholy romance, and all about the exploration of queer isolation and lingering childhood trauma, it adds up to an unexpectedly uplifting meditation on love with supernatural overtones that render it into the stuff of mystical poetry. An essential queer classic, right out of the box.

I Saw the TV Glow (2024)

As queer cinema continues to struggle with the challenge of bringing trans stories to the big screen in the face of political pushback from transphobic culture warriors, filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun has bravely pushed forward, and this – her second feature – achieves full-on cinematic greatness, delivering a trans allegory in the shape of a disquieting horror movie about former teen schoolmates (Justice Smith and Jack Haven) haunted by phantom memories of a favorite TV show from their past. Capped with a final sequence that drives home the despair of living a life of pretense against your own inner truth, it’s a surreal and devastatingly immediate fantasia on themes of gender, sexuality, and conformity, but also an indictment against the outright erasure of trans identity in a world that would rather pretend it never existed in the first place.

Love Lies Bleeding (2024)

Rose Glass’s lesbian neo-noir thriller teams queer icon Kristen Stewart with Katy O’Brien for a twisted love story between the daughter of a small-town crime boss and a steroid-addled aspiring female bodybuilder which leads them both down a harrowing road of violence and terrible choices yet keeps us pulling for their union every step of the way. A slice of deliberate B-movie exploitation cinema at its most elevated, it embraces its generic camp to take us on a deliciously unpredictable wild ride fueled by a deeply satisfying spirit of queer feminist rebellion.

The Visitor (2024)

Underground filmmaker and “queercore” pioneer Bruce La Bruce has a long history of creating brilliant countercultural cinema underneath the mainstream radar, but he finds his way onto our list via his audacious remake of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Terorema,” in which a mysterious and sexually fluid stranger destroys a dissolute bourgeois household from within by seducing each of them – from father and mother to son, daughter, and maid – in turn. Reset into contemporary England and informed by a xenophobic fear of the “other,” it doubles down on Pasolini’s socio-political statement while upping the ante with transgressive scenes of un-simulated sex. The result is an artfully campy, frequently absurd, and completely unforgettable excursion into radical queer expression that fearlessly exposes the hypocrisies of so-called “straight” society while fostering an “eat the rich” attitude of sexual rebellion that has yet to be matched by any filmmaker working within “the system.”

The History of Sound (2025)

South African filmmaker Oliver Hermanus has made a number of passionate queer films during his career, but this WWI-era romantic drama about two music scholars (Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor), who fall in love while gathering folk songs in rural New England, surpasses his earlier triumphs by offering up a bittersweet-but-transcendent meditation on the power of music to carry the memories of shared struggle and hardship forward through each new generation, as humans – queer or otherwise – strive to find happiness in the proscribed limitations of their lives. Yes, it’s tragic; but thanks to the exceptional tenderness between its two stars and the compassionate treatment which Hermanus extends to their star-crossed characters, it leaves us with the memory of the good things while offering hope for a future that gives us – at long last – the freedom to be who we are.

In case you didn’t know, “Pillion” – the title of debut UK filmmaker Harry Lighton’s buzzy gay “fetish rom-com” starring Scandinavian hunk Alexander Skarsgård and “Harry Potter” alumnus Harry Melling – refers to a rear seat on a motorcycle for a passenger, and the person who occupies it is said to be “riding pillion.”

That definition might be useful going into the movie’s story of an introverted gay Londoner who becomes involved with a handsome but icy biker and is introduced to the subculture of Dom/sub relationships, in that it evokes a dynamic that might be said to reflect the one that exists between its two main characters. There is nothing about Lighton’s disarmingly humorous and surprisingly sweet film, however, that seems to imply an interest in offering pat explanations or easy value judgments about the lifestyle it explores, so to think its title is meant as some kind of summation would be a mistake.

It centers on Colin (Melling), a timid parking warden who still lives with his mom and dad (Lesley Sharp and Douglas Hodge) and sings with a barbershop quartet as a hobby. After a gig singing Christmas carols at a gay bar, he catches the eye of sleekly confident Ray (Skarsgård), who gives him his phone number after a brief and thrillingly intimidating interaction. Prompted by his parents, he decides to call, leading to a steamy hookup in a back alley – and eventually, a live-in BDSM situation in which he becomes Ray’s official “sub,” catering to his every need and becoming a member of the gay biker community to which he belongs. It’s all perfectly fine with Colin, who embraces his role with pleasure; but when he begins to long for a deeper connection with the enigmatic and emotionally distant Ray, it triggers a disruption in the dynamic of their relationship, putting it to a test it may not be able to pass.

“Pillion” was already creating a stir before its prize-winning debut at the Cannes Film Festival last May, largely thanks to the highly publicized casting of Skarsgård as the leather-clad leading man in a gay BDSM romance. But near-universal critical acclaim quickly validated the buzz, turning it into one of 2025’s most anticipated movie releases – particularly, of course, for gay audiences, and especially for those who are part of the BDSM community and rarely get the opportunity to be “seen” on the screen as anything other than a lazy stereotype. 

Naturally, much of that buzz has been driven by a prurient fervor, fueled by the promise of kinky onscreen sex and rumors of a notorious close-up highlighting the full-frontal assets of a certain Swedish movie star. One of the things that’s remarkable about “Pillion,” however, is that while it certainly doesn’t downplay the overt sexual aspect of the relationship at its center, it doesn’t use them to titillate or shock us. Its plentiful scenes of intimacy are sexy, yes, but they also chart the development of the characters’ bond together, expressing feelings that can only be left unspoken within their agreed-on dynamic. They advance both the story and our awareness of the characters’ psychology, and while they may occasionally provide a jolt for viewers not accustomed to seeing gay fetish sex portrayed explicitly on screen, they successfully capture the joy of the experience instead of making it feel sensationalized or lurid.

In fact, once “Pillion” ends, it’s not the sex (not exclusively, at least) that lingers in our mind; it’s the delicate balance it maintains between tension and ease, detachment and tenderness, rigidity and flow – mirroring the surging passions contained within the strictly regimented order of their power dynamic. It’s the depth of Melling’s film-anchoring performance, in which he undergoes an entire voyage of discovery that emphasizes Colin’s strength, not his timidity, and allows us to relate to him in ways that may surprise us. It’s the authenticity of the relationships between all the characters, from Sharp and Hodge’s doting parents to Scissor Sisters front man Jake Shears (in his film acting debut) as a fellow sub who ignites a spark of jealousy between Colin and Ray; most of all, it’s the way that it allows the story to move, with a slow and methodical rhythm – reflected in the measured strains of Eric Satie’s “Gymnopode No.1” that echo through Oliver Coates’ evocative score – that makes it all feel perfectly natural.

And yes, it’s also the presence of Skarsgård, who subtly (and with wry humor) contrasts tight-lipped alpha stoicism with his flawless male beauty that feels like a force of nature. We don’t know much about Ray, ever, through the dialogue in Lighton’s tersely worded screenplay, but we can draw our own conclusions from the eloquent silence that Skarsgård wraps around the character like a security blanket. Best of all, he never uses his “Dom” role in the film to overshadow Melling – it’s Colin’s story, after all, and Skarsgård’s Ray deploys a tactic of “quiet command” on him throughout without ever stealing his spotlight.

As for the film’s writer/director, Lighton manages perhaps the most delicate balancing act of all. He takes a story (adapted from a novel by Adam Mars-Jones) about someone discovering himself in the BDSM community, who engages in sexual behavior that’s likely out of the comfort zone of many viewers and enters a “romantic” partnership most people would find unacceptable, and turns it into a movie that is all about the complexities of human experience. You may not know much (or want to) about life as a sub in a BDSM partnership, but you know what it feels like to love someone, and to long for love in return; Lighton understands that “Pillion” is a story about that, and he knows how to tell it so that you will understand it, too.

That said, it’s obvious there will be many audiences out there for whom a movie about leather-clad queer fetish sex might simply be a step too far for them to take. Anyone approaching “Pillion” should be aware that, depending on your own level of familiarity – or comfort – with the BDSM lifestyle, your reaction may vary across a spectrum of perspectives; if you’ve been around it, nothing the movie shows you is likely to ruffle your feathers, and if you haven’t, well, only you know your limits.

For us, it’s a film to admire from a promising new queer director, shining a light on an insular culture within the larger rainbow community with intelligence, dignity, and a refreshing lack of the homophobic tropes that so often haunt queer movies, even when they are made by queer filmmakers themselves.

Unfortunately for Americans, while “Pillion” was released in the UK on Nov. 28, we won’t get a chance to see it until Feb. 6. With the buzz now even stronger and the stars in full “promotional” mode on the talk show circuit, we thought it would be a good idea to let you know that the wait might still be a while, but it will be worth it. 

After all, as any good Dom can tell you, a pleasure withheld tastes even sweeter when it’s finally given.