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 favorites might not be the same as yours, because taste is always subjective, so look at this as an inspiration to celebrate yours 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 rebellious self-expression felt like “being seen,” and the rest is history. 

Mulholland Drive (2021)

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 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 refugee from Burundi (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, that incorporates the struggle for queer identity into a larger battle against suppression and domination by a shadowy over-class concerned only with power and profit. 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 queer Asian-American males in the predominantly 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 world 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’s an unexpectedly uplifting love story 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 an aspiring steroid-addled bodybuilder which takes them both on 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 achieve a deeply satisfying spirit of rebellion that leaves us all calling for an end to the patriarchy, right now.

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 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 sociopolitical statement while upping the ante with transgressive scenes of un-simulated sex. The result is an 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 preserve and immortalize the struggles and hardships of each 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 compassion with which Hermanus extends to them, 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.

What does longing for your child look like? What happens when they resurface in front of you, when that rift was once an immeasurable open sea — a searing pain that silently hollowed you out for decades? For the child wrenched away by circumstance and thrown into the purgatory of always feeling in-between: in between home, in between being a whole person, in between who you could have been and who you are now — what does it mean to become and belong?

In filmmaker Jota Mun’s documentary “Between Goodbyes”, the fragmented yearning for home, family and identity are woven together into a tremendous and at times dream-like contemplation of the self, focused on various family members set adrift by a deceitful international adoption machine. 

The story is focused on Mieke Murkes, a queer Korean adoptee who grew up in the rural village of Vaassen in the Netherlands. Shortly after her birth in 1982, she was raised by Willy, a devout evangelical Christian woman. But the story does not begin with Mieke in Vaassen. It begins with Okgyun, her original mother, walking through an ephemeral meadow as she makes her way to a shoreline. This is our first point of loss. 

It is important to understand how the stories of Okgyun and Mieke exist. In “Between Goodbyes”, we see a frustrating glimpse into the cultural and political forces that created this separation. Since 1955, 200,000 children have been adopted from South Korea, and just three years ago, several of these adoptees found that their documents had been falsified. Murkes would sift through her own papers in “Between Goodbyes”, noting their dull and rote descriptions of her physical appearance and health. “The paperwork is as if you’re buying a new car,” Murkes says. 

Written nearby: “Both parents are unknown,” a falsehood that leaves the family breathless. It is a gut punch. 

This March, a South Korean governmental agency admitted that it had violated the rights of adoptees, but an investigation that began in 2022 at the behest of over 350 Korean adoptees has been halted. Whether or not retribution can ever be paid is up in the air, but the reeling grief and complicated self-reckoning many of these adoptees and their families face are rendered and expressed with deep tenderness in Mun’s documentary. “I did not know how to fit the Korean part of me in there,” Murkes said. 

When Okgyun was pregnant with Mieke, she was also raising three other daughters: Mijin, Mikyung and Taekyung. The population was booming, and mothers like herself were being shamed for continuing to have children. Considering abortion, Okgyun recounts a midwife who convinced her not to go through with it — that if the child were a boy, she should keep him. If it turned out to be a girl, she could give her away to live “a good life” in the U.S. “Men are always positioned above women,” Okgyun said. “I always hated that.” 

After Mieke was born, Okgyun’s mother-in-law told her to give her away. “She was gone before I saw her face,” Okgyun said. “I let her go.” Her guilt tightens her throat, trembles in her voice. “I dreamed of Mieke a lot. I can’t tell you how many times,” Okgyun said. “Dreaming and forgetting, dreaming, and forgetting. The thought that kept me going is that one day I can find Mieke.” 

What ensued was a several years-long search. Kwangho, Mieke’s original father, pleaded with an adoption agency for any leads about Mieke. They denied him several times and his desperation only grew. “I had to find her to be at peace before I die,” he said. 

Meanwhile, Mieke’s own grief and confusion were compounding. When she was beginning to discover her queerness, she was deeply ingrained in local religious spaces. What made her feel free, the church treated as an aberration — as behavior that resulted from loss. 

When she would eventually meet her original family, they, too, had trouble processing her queer identity and masculine presentation. To them, queerness was “acquired” from being raised in a foreign land. With time, they grew to embrace Mieke and her partner, Marit, even as misunderstandings arose. Of this, Mieke’s conflictedness is explored. Gay rights are more advanced and accepted in the Netherlands than in South Korea, but this does not mean contending with her queerness would have been easy with her adoptive mother, Willy. “It probably would have disappointed her a lot,” Mieke tearfully revealed.

Mieke’s stepping in between knowing and unknowing is reminiscent of Okgyun’s dreaming and forgetting — their grief and confusion move within them, replicating themselves over and over again. “Between Goodbyes” dives deeply into this in order to offer a portrait of healing: of its complications and the necessity of community support to achieve this. 

Mun discusses the film with the Los Angeles Blade, diving into how reunification between adoptees and original family members is, in many ways, made nearly impossible by factors like language and cultural barriers enforced and held tightly in place by the international adoption system. This film illustrates a break in this narrative and the mighty efforts behind it all.

A broadcast version of “Between Goodbyes” is now available to stream on PBS. See below for more information.

Can you tell me about the inception of making “Between Goodbyes”? Have you always wanted to tell a story about international Korean adoption from a queer perspective?

As a queer Korean adoptee myself, [there are] so many intersections that I haven’t quite seen on screen before. So I was always really excited about making something about my community. And then I’d say, in 2017, is around when I started getting closer to zeroing in on the idea. I think part of it was through befriending Mieke and hearing her parents’ story. Hearing about their efforts really blew my mind. 

So much of the standard narrative is that adoptees initiate the search. So even before meeting [Okgyun and Kwangho], it just felt like it spoke so loudly of not only their character, but a piece of the puzzle that I had never considered — that they could be longing for us. And I think as an adoptee, you always wonder what [your original parents] would think. So it’s very noticeable that we almost don’t ever hear from them directly. Even in narrative stories of adoption, they’re usually deleted, or they’re written in a really flat way that feels like they’re serving the plot. I’ve never seen a depiction of birth mothers in particular who are questioning their own circumstances or feel angry about it.

There’s a lot of nuance given to all of the different people that we see in the story. The pain is layered and deep, and we don’t just view it from one perspective. What was it like having to portray this hurt, when many adoption stories typically focus solely on the adoptee’s emotional and personal journey?

It’s so unique through each lens, even though it’s the same pain. Like her sisters — of course, it’s going to affect them. Even if she never said anything, they must have felt it. It just ripples out to everyone and keeps expanding. 

Originally, it was focused on Mieke, because that’s who I had the most access to, and she’s the closest to me in terms of general identity markers. So in my mind, I felt more confident that I could tell her story in a nuanced way. But what about Okgyun? I was hitting a similar barrier of communication that Mieke had hit. That’s part of why our main producer, Zoe Sua Cho, was so essential in conveying more about Okygun and the original family’s side of the story. 

When I was in the early stages of developing the film, there was a quote that I felt was really inspirational: “In our hurting, we did not realize that we were stolen from each other” (by SN Désirée Cha from Outsiders Within Writing on Transracial Adoption.) The same quote came back to me in the edit and helped us find a narrative structure that went beyond just one person’s perspective. 

What if the main character is the collective trauma, a singular event that causes the family to splinter and suffer across decades? I wanted to explore how tempting it is in these moments of righteous anger at systemic problems to end up fighting with each other. I feel like they both had to mourn something that was so much bigger than any one family. Mieke’s adoption affected so many people that I almost wanted that to be the main character. How do we not get lost in that pain and still try to come back together? It’s too much to carry alone. 

So the main character is not necessarily one person, but the issue that you’re trying to tackle throughout the story. It also makes me think about how the documentary itself, or the making of it, also participates in this community healing that I feel like was the focus of “Between Goodbyes”.

I hope it’s an important layer. Suffice to say I think I always deflect to name a singular main character. I wanted to show everyone’s point of view while of course highlighting especially Okgyun and Mieke. 

What else can you share about your approach to filmmaking?

You know, I was on this wonderful panel earlier this year, hosted by A-DOC, and I kind of surprised myself in preparing for it. I realized, actually, I have a lot of strong beliefs on filmmaking ethics that I hope come through in the film. For example, I reject the genius artist myth. The fantasy that if an artist is talented enough, they get permission to treat everyone around them terribly. That exploitation and squeezing things out of people is the best way to make great art. 

Instead, I want to believe that the sensitivity, the care, and emotional work I poured in is going to come shining through in the film. And I do think that’s part of why we witnessed so many intensely vulnerable moments that I couldn’t have predicted.

This emotional connection to the film is also, visually, represented in artistic and inventive ways. There are sequences interspersed throughout that feel dream-like and cinematic. Creatively, what was it like to structure and craft how you wanted those scenes to be, the weight that they carried, and why you wanted to represent them in that way?

Aw, thanks for saying so! I was clear from the beginning that I wanted certain moments in the film to look as cinematic and epically life-changing as they feel in real life. Because visually, sometimes these moments of heartbreak can look rather dull. The deep heartbreak of a farewell at the airport. What does it look like? It looks like two people hugging in a very normal-looking terminal. But that’s not what it feels like. It feels larger than life. So to me, every single one of the art [scenes] has a very literal symbolism in my mind.

I really enjoy the complexity given to the family, both through the artistic symbolism and through the different angles we get to view them in. When it comes to Mieke’s queer identity, there are varying levels of acceptance and also tension that co-exist. One of her sisters, Mikyung, skirts around terms and labels, instead saying Mieke is “like that,” and “I don’t know anyone like that.” There was this feeling that queerness is learned or acquired elsewhere — that Mieke “wouldn’t have turned out like that” if she had grown up with her original family in Korea.

I can’t be sure what they were implying but you know, I definitely didn’t want to fall into a common trope of seeing Western values as being so liberal and accepting and framing all other cultures as homophobic. I want to be clear that there is a queer community in Seoul. It’s not the same as Amsterdam, of course, but it does exist. 

That’s part of why it was important for me to include Mieke mentioned what she thinks her Dutch mom would have thought — just to clarify that homophobes are everywhere. There are plenty of them here in the West as well. Mieke’s Dutch parents were Evangelist Christians. So it’s not like everyone in the West is free to be a lesbian, you know?

Another moment that struck me in the film was a moment where we, as the audience, get to see you clearly. In this scene, we see you and Mieke on a rooftop, and you’re consoling her as she’s trying to prepare for a difficult conversation with her original mother, Okgyun. Did you have to find a balance in terms of being the director of this film and being Mieke’s friend?

It was really important to me to show friendship and how much that can help you along the journey. You think that for her to emotionally process things, it would have to be with her mom. But that rooftop conversation felt so transformative in itself. And then what ended up being the kind of mirror scene to that was Okgyun talking to Ruth [a fellow original mother]. She needed a buddy, too. How many times in life are we like: the opposing party doesn’t need to get it, but if my friend just could — that would give me so much relief and patience to enter the actual conversation with the person I’m upset with. 

Being so personally close to Mieke and her family meant that my film was about all people I loved and cared about. I think the documentary field comes from such a long history of an anthropological approach. It’s like, “I’ve helicoptered in, and I just met you, but I’m the expert artist.” I wish the ethos were the opposite; we need to care about everyone, from the participants to the crew. I don’t want the blood, sweat, and tears to come through on the screen. I hope that watching it makes people feel cloaked in tenderness and care.

I was so worried about everyone, probably too much. It’s such a weird thing to ask people to do, to be in a film, so I took that with a lot of responsibility. Be aware of the impact you’re having. I am having an effect on this family’s life. I almost wanted to be like: “Forget my art project.” This is about the rest of their lives as a family, and that’s more important. So it became a light on my path, trying to make decisions as best I could to have a positive impact on their relationship. 

It almost made me question my ethics in a different direction. “Am I intervening too much?” And that’s a strange thing: I have to admit I exist. I’m not a fly on the wall. And I think that’s why the conversation on the roof was really the most vulnerable for me, because I was showing myself. I’ve actually been here the whole time, cheering them on or trying to diffuse tension. I set out to make a film about how hard it is to stay in reunion, but now I’ve realized I’ll be heartbroken if their reunion doesn’t last. So in many ways the film was really just a vehicle for my attempt at keeping us all connected across so many distances, and that’s my own emotional journey or connection to their story.

Mun plans to release the full-length film in 2026, along with deleted scenes and additional footage. Up-to-date information can be found on the film’s Instagram page.