If you think the idea of a movie about two gender-nonconforming buddies embarking on an anti-establishment crime spree feels dangerously radical in 2026, just think how it must have felt 25 years ago.

That’s when “By Hook or By Crook,” a DIY independent film shot in low-tech “Mini-DV” format by a pair of San Francisco artists (Silas Howard and Harry Dodge, who co-wrote, co-directed, and co-starred in it), became a sensation at the 2001 Frameline Festival. Their reason for making it was they were tired of waiting for someone else to bring authentic queer experience and stories to the screen, so they decided to do it themselves.

Now given a 4K restoration that preserves the filmmakers’ intentions for the look of their movie, it’s getting a 25th anniversary re-release in theaters (starting with screenings in New York and Washington D.C. on June 12 and Los Angeles on June 16) and a VOD premiere from “boutique distributor” Altered Innocence. It still feels confrontationally transgressive today, which says a lot about the progress that’s been made and lost in the struggle for queer visibility, especially when it involves those in the trans, nonbinary, or otherwise gender nonconforming parts of our community.

Described as a “trans and butch buddy film” in the publicity for its new release, “By Hook or By Crook” is centered on Shy (Howard), a young transmasculine dreamer who leaves his small Kansas town after the death of his beloved father and heads pennilessly for San Francisco with a plan to “fight the power” by living a life of crime. There, he meets the “deliriously expressive” Valentine, a “butch dyke and bulldagger” whom he rescues from a queer-phobic attack. The two become friends, embarking with Val’s roommate and lover, Billie (Stanya Kahn), on a “Bonnie and Clyde” inspired career as outlaws stealing from the system to survive – or at least, that’s the idea, if they can scrape together enough change to buy a gun. In the meantime, they grapple together with an assortment of personal and emotional issues, blending into a makeshift family as they learn to trust and support each other along the way.

Soaked in a gritty, streetwise aesthetic and a guerilla-style docu-realism, yet percolating with humor that bubbles up in all the right places throughout, it’s a movie that leans into its no-frills style instead of trying to cover or apologize for it. Its improvisational tone creates a flow that feels like a stream-of-consciousness drift, but it stays committed enough to its “hustler-in-the-big-city” narrative structure (which candidly co-opts the basic formula of “Midnight Cowboy”) that it never feels aimless. For millennial and pre-millennial viewers, it offers a nostalgic glimpse at the “queercore” scene in a San Francisco since-transformed; and although its narrative is sometimes a little rough around the edges, so are its characters, so the effect is complementary rather than jarring. There’s even a sly cameo from rocker Joan Jett (whose cover of The Replacements’ song “Androgynous” also shows up over the restoration’s “reconstructed” end credits) for a touch of celebrity appeal.

What stands out as the most striking feature of Howard and Dodge’s groundbreaking film, however, is the same thing that stood out when it debuted, which again speaks volumes about how far we haven’t come: ”By Hook or By Crook” makes no effort to pigeonhole its characters into neatly defined gender or sexual categories – it simply lets them be who they are.

As Howard explains it in his filmmaker’s statement for the new release, “One thing we did […] that I think was ahead of its time – back then surely, and still is today – is that we didn’t explain ourselves to anyone, we were non-binary and didn’t justify our characters’ gender expressions and experiences or define it to the audience. We wanted to make a film about a third gender, which is where I felt I personally lived, at the time.”

Dodge comments on the choice as well. “People note time and again that we don’t explain or use identity categories or labels in the film. A viewer is simply in the fishbowl with us. […] we didn’t label because — it was like, straight people don’t explain straightness, you know? So these characters, they’re loving, feverish, fallible. End of explanation.”

Additionally, the two filmmakers chose to avoid making their characters into (as Howard puts it) “model-queers,” who “have to be perfect and good and have qualities that the mainstream can agree are redeeming.”

Dodge explains their thinking by remembering a university screening shortly after the film’s initial release, where some viewers “were miffed that we had done this representation of queers as criminals. ‘Why did you feel free to make them, one, mentally ill, and two—criminal?’ And I remember saying, ‘We are not a PR outfit for the gay community.’ [In the] movies I love, man, the characters are flawed.”

Watching now, it’s still disorienting to hear Val using “he/her” pronouns despite her masculine presentation, and there’s still a thrilling sense of empowerment when Shy responds to a curious child’s question, “Are you a boy or a girl?” with an unhesitant “Both!” We still squirm at Val’s sometimes alarming behavioral quirks, though we might today recognize her more easily as being “on the spectrum,” thanks to a wider awareness of neurodivergence. These responses are visceral, but “By Hook or By Crook” evaporates them quickly by not playing into them. Instead, it just lets the characters’ humanity shine through. “Our characters are tender fuck-ups, like us,” says Howard, “forever trying to get to a better place,” and because of that, we merely accept them for who they are and roll with it – largely because its two filmmakers also prove themselves well-suited for working in front of the camera, too, and their performances are the glue that holds it all together, while also keeping us invested in their journey together, both as individuals and as a pair of buddies. 

In the end, that’s what “By Hook or By Crook” leaves us with. Its unapologetic disregard for “curating” its queerness may catch our attention; the fiercely anti-capitalistic thrust of its “stealing from The Man” premise might distract us with politics; its “anything goes” attitude toward the infinite spectrums of gender expression and sexual identity unquestionably sparks us with a sense of freedom and possibility. But when the final credits roll, it’s the universal recognition of camaraderie, of simple but vital human connection, that matters most of all. 

What better message could we hope for, during Pride month or any other time, than that?

When movies are labeled as “controversial,” the effect is often akin to Oscar Wilde’s quip that “there’s only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

Indeed, a whiff of controversy can be the best publicity of all, turning a movie that might otherwise have been no more than a blip on the cultural radar into the buzziest “hidden gem” of the season – and “Blue Film,” a two-character psychosexual drama about an encounter between a male sex worker and a much-older client, is a perfect example. The debut feature of filmmaker Elliot Tuttle, it was rejected for inclusion at last year’s Sundance and SXSW festivals before finally premiering at the Edinborough International film fest; and even then, some audience members were walking out of the theater in disgust.

It’s easy to see why, really. The taboos it breaks run far deeper than just frank depiction of queer sexuality to rattle some among the ones most hard-coded into our cultural DNA, and the directness with which it pushes past our comfort zones is merciless. It begins with Aaron Eagle (Kieron Moore), a Los Angeles “fetish cam-boy” who specializes in financial humiliation and domination, proudly performing for his online fans by fondling his stacked physique on camera while deriding them with homophobic slurs and other forms of verbal abuse. He also taunts them by bragging that one of them is paying $50,000 to be abused in person overnight.

When he shows up for the gig, he’s greeted by an older man in a ski mask (Reed Birney), who wants to begin their session by asking him questions on camera about his personal life. Aaron agrees, but makes up the answers, only to have the client call out his lies; the mask soon comes off, revealing that the man behind it is Hank Johnson, a teacher who had been fired from Aaron’s home town middle school after attempting to molest a student in the boys’ restroom, and who confesses that he has spent his life savings to set up this meeting because he was once “in love” with Aaron from afar. Claiming he doesn’t want a sexual experience, but simply the chance to “get to know” each other and achieve a kind of closure in his old age, he convinces a wary-but-intrigued Aaron to stay, setting the scene for a night of charged conversation, true confessions, and secretive soul-baring, which leads them to discover unexpected common ground.

It’s clear from even the barest description that Tuttle’s movie is not designed for all audiences. Even within the “niche” of queer cinema, these are “problematic” characters: sex workers, despite years of growing acceptance and decriminalization, are still largely stigmatized by the culture at large; and as for convicted pedophiles, you’re more likely to find tolerance for them in the halls of government than on a big screen. Yet in “Blue Film,” these are the characters we get, and as a result, it’s a movie in which almost everything that is said or done has a layer – and often, several layers – that’s likely to be objectionable to someone in the audience.

That’s not by mistake. In his director’s statement, Tuttle calls his film an “essay on perversion,” born from “the accumulation of a lifetime of private thoughts regarding sex, fetish, and relationships,” and fueled by his frustration with what he calls the “conceptualization” of sex on the screen. His purpose in presenting a two-person “echo chamber” is an exploration of how these sexually stigmatized individuals find a “reckoning with the ways in which they can and cannot connect with those around them,” in which his explicit intention is to make sex on the screen “feel uncomfortable, scary, and laced with significance.” It’s safe to say that he succeeded.

Of course, it would be easy enough to stave off the discomfort “Blue Film” creates for us to sit in by dismissing the whole thing as deliberately sensational, if not for the fact that it’s so well done. Tuttle directs it like a thriller – a fitting approach, considering the uneasy dynamic between its characters, each of whom might easily be operating with malicious intent, and the generally “sketchy” circumstances of their arranged meeting – and he uses the resulting tension as a subliminal undercurrent that keeps us feeling unsettled. When things do begin to get sexy (because of course they do, Hank’s protestations of wholesome intent notwithstanding), he plays into the anticipated uneasiness of sexually squeamish viewers by layering in some particularly ominous strains from Isaac Eiger’s moody electronic score; it feels like we’re about to see something horrible, when in fact we don’t even get any full-frontal nudity.

In fact, it’s in these sexual moments – which, though explicit enough to get the point across, never feel pornographic – that “Blue Film” may deliver its most directly transgressive imagery. Though both men are adults, participating in consensual acts, what we are watching is probably the ultimate sexual taboo of all, not because of what we see but because we know the fantasy being played out in their minds. It’s unsettling, perhaps even for the most open-minded fetishists out there, yet in the unvarnished honesty with which the movie strives to deliver its uncomfortable truths, it somehow plays as something almost sweet.

As always in a film that presents characters who push the limits of our ethical and moral boundaries, the actors carry the weight of responsibility for transcending (or at least tempering) our judgment of them; in this case, the two star players face a monumental task, and they rise to it with unflinching commitment. Birney, a Tony-winning actor who also served as an executive producer on the film, has the more challenging burden, but he defies the odds by bestowing Hank with both the grace of a man who has learned how to endure shame and the cageyness that comes from a life of keeping it hidden. Moore, an up-and-coming British actor (recently seen in the gays-in-the-military series, “Boots”), leans into the aggressive toxicity of his fetish “Dom” persona with a ferocity that makes the “sub” vulnerability he slowly makes visible feel even more delicate; indeed, they both navigate the spectrum of that dynamic in a way that emphasizes its subtle fluidity, and “Blue Film” could not work without their contributions.

But work it does, for those who are able to get past their many layers of discomfort over its subject matter; it will speak most directly to those who have already come to embrace their own alternative sexualities, who understand that sex work can be empowering, who recognize that forbidden desires are not a choice and can find empathy for those who must live with them. Still, a movie that acknowledges (among other things) the validity of rape fantasies, the ancient cultural traditions of pederasty, and the transcendence of self-loathing through fetish is a movie that has appeal for only a particular kind of viewer; and with “Blue Film” coming to VOD platforms June 12, you’re the only one who can decide if you’re one of them.

When Albert Camus published “L’etranger” (“The Stranger”) in 1942, he was living in Nazi-occupied France, so it’s no surprise that it became one of the most celebrated “existential” novels of all time. A fascist regime is great for inspiring thoughts of an indifferent and meaningless universe.

It wasn’t his first experience with authoritarianism. Born to a working-class white European family in then-French Algeria, he grew up observing the harsh treatment of the native North Africans by the colonists who governed them. It was this personal history, amplified by the spread of European fascism, that found its voice in “The Stranger.” Short, terse, and shrouded in a cloak of ennui, it was his first novel – novella, really – but its impact was seismic.

Naturally, its influence has run through the world of cinema, and, it has been translated to the screen three times — most recently by French filmmaker François Ozon, whose screen version won acclaim at last year’s Venice Film Festival, and is now available for on-demand streaming in the U.S.

Ozon’s vision is captured in gleaming black-and-white, blending the luster of modern-day faux-vintage fashion photography with the nostalgic flavor of classic era “arthouse” and European cinema, and it maintains a largely faithful connection to Camus’s novel, at least in terms of plot. It’s the story of Meursault (Benjamin Voisin), a French settler living in the capital city of Algiers, who receives word that his mother has died. He takes time off from work, traveling to the nursing home – where he had sent her three years before – in order to attend her funeral, but remains seemingly emotionless throughout, prompting members of the staff and other residents to mark his apparent lack of customary grief.

When he returns to Algiers, he encounters Marie (Rebecca Marder), a former co-worker, and after spending the day together, the two become romantically involved. Their relationship continues over the next few weeks, while they also associate with Meursault’s neighbor Raymond (Pierre Lottin) – a suspected pimp who, after beating his Arab mistress, is being followed and harassed by her brother (Abderrahmane Dehkani) and his friends. After a skirmish with the Arabs, Meursault encounters the brother alone during a walk on the beach, and shoots the young man dead with a pistol given to him for protection by Raymond. On trial for murder, he offers no defense and expresses no remorse. He is convicted and sentenced to death, facing it all with emotional detachment, and seeming to find liberation in the recognition that none of it matters, anyway.

Though it’s a tale that includes romance, murder, and courtroom drama, it feels like a story in which nothing really happens – which is, of course, the perfect effect to emphasize the point of Camus’s philosophical viewpoint; but while that might satisfy the kind of viewers drawn to a film of a Camus novel, Ozon’s movie probably won’t hold much appeal for audiences seeking action, suspense, feel-good sentiment, or easy answers to the moral dilemmas that come hand-in-hand with being alive. Camus was interested in the opposite effect, a confrontation with existence which leaves no room for comfortable denials, and Ozon’s inflection on the original’s themes makes no effort to soften the blow. 

What it does, however, is introduce – without having to adjust the narrative provided by Camus – an element of queerness that lends the whole story a new layer of subtext through what can only be described as the “gay male gaze” that anchors the film’s visual aesthetic.

It’s in the way the camera – aimed by Ozon and cinematographer Manu Dacosse – remains fixated on its star, the exquisitely beautiful Voisin, lingering on his face, his frame, or his body in swim trunks. There’s a sensuality in the way the director shows us female beauty, too, but it’s never framed as the “object” of desire; and in the narrative’s key scene – the killing by the sea – there’s an inescapable element of repressed homoeroticism, born perhaps by associations with the mid-20th-century queer aesthetic of writers like Jean Genet or artists like George Quaintance, or pretentiously artsy commercials for high-end men’s cologne, or just from real-life memories of cruising on the beach. On the surface, Meursault gives no sign of queerness; but the emphasis that Ozon brings to the story – almost purely through visual suggestion – lends the character, already an outsider to the world of “normal” human experience in the first place, an even deeper sense of “otherness.”

As to that, Voisin’s performance is effective for reasons beyond his model-esque physical perfection; there’s a vast inner life happening under that pretty face, and the actor conveys it with a “less-is-more” approach that aligns perfectly with the character’s dissociation from conventional humanity. He’s compelling enough to engage us, and intelligent enough in his expression of Camus’ ideas to help us grasp them even as he makes us feel them – and frankly, that’s saying a lot.

The rest of the cast is effective, as well, though most of them serve primarily as a foil to reflect Voisin and his character. Marder brings a relatably savvy-yet-romantic presence as Marie, and Lottin gives Raymond a kind of louche charisma that evokes a brand of appealing-but-toxic masculinity. Swann Arlaud also stands out as the prison priest who attempts to convert Meursault on the eve of his execution, bearing the full brunt of Camus’ existentialist arguments in a scene that somehow taps into transgressive homoerotic fantasies even as its characters discuss impending death.

Camus, for his part, did not see himself as an existentialist; instead, he embraced and promoted a viewpoint in which human life is defined by its relationship with what he called “The Absurd” – the gap between reality and our assumed expectations about it, where our circumstances and behavior become obviously ridiculous – and believed that, in a meaningless universe, we are free to find our own meaning. An essay he published around the same time (“The Myth of Sisyphus”) posited that finding happiness in the struggle was perhaps the most logical response to facing an unfeeling world, and the Absurdist movement he helped to define used humor – albeit often the dark and sardonic variety – as a means to expose the madness of trying to impose sense on a nonsensical world. In the end, his writings reveal him as a deeply humanistic thinker, whose acceptance of objective reality served only to deepen his dedication to the ideal of a better mankind.

Whether or not any of that comes across in Ozon’s artful film, which emphasizes the immediacy of experience – the beach, the sea, the sun, the visceral responses we get from sex or violence – over the intellectual arguments that Camus would elucidate throughout his life, probably depends on one’s own grasp of Existentialist thinking and its offshoots. In any case, while Ozon’s “The Stranger” might fall short in the challenge to convey its philosophical arguments, it more than succeeds as a stylish piece of international art cinema, and it just might – hopefully – inspire audiences to go on a deeper dive into the mind of Albert Camus.

And even if it doesn’t, it’s still pretty to look at.