FROM INDIE QUEER CINEMA TO THE HOLLYWOOD MAINSTREAM, THE PINK LENS PUTS THE DEPICTION OF LGBT+ PEOPLE IN CINEMA IN THE UK UNDER THE MICROSCOPE.
FUTURE: COMING SOON...
ROTTING IN THE SUN
Starring: Sebastian Silva, Jordan Firstman, Catalina Saavedra
Director: Sebastian Silva
Country: Mexico
UK Release: 15th September 2023 on VOD, released by MUBI
Follows social media celebrity Jordan Firstman as he starts a search for filmmaker Sebastian Silva who went missing in Mexico City. He suspects that the cleaning lady in Sebastian's building may be involved in his disappearance.
HOUSEKEEPING FOR BEGINNERS
Starring: Anamaria Marinca, Alina Serban, Samson Selim
Director: Goran Stolevski
Country: North Macedonia
UK Release: 7th October 2023 in cinemas, released by Focus Features
A queer woman is forced to raise her partner's daughter who herself doesn't want to be a mother. (Awaiting a trailer)
THE QUEEN OF MY DREAMS
Starring: Amrit Kaur, Nimra Bucha
Director: Fawzia Mirza
Country: Canada
UK Release: 7th October 2023 at the BFI London Film Festival
Azra is ripped away from her happy queer life when her father dies while holidaying in Pakistan. And as she tries to resist conservative norms, Azra finds herself drawn into conflict with her mother, whose own coming of age – shown in flashbacks – was defined by feelings of rebellion.
THE LATENT IMAGE
Starring: Joshua Tonks, William Tippery, Jay Clift
Director: Alexander McGregor Birrell
Country: UK
UK Release: 8th October 2023 on VOD, released by Cinephobia/Bounty
A handsome stranger appears at a young thriller writer’s cabin deep in the American wilderness. Mysterious, intriguing, attractive and terrifying, has he found the perfect inspiration for his new book or are his darkest fantasies about to come to life?
DOWN LOW
Starring: Zachary Quinto, Lucas Gage, Judith Light
Director: Rightor Doyle
Country: USA
UK Release: 10th October 2023 on VOD, released by Sony Pictures
A deeply repressed man, the uninhibited young man that gives him a happy ending, and all the lives they ruin along the way.
ROCK HUDSON: ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS
Director: Stephen Kijak
Country: USA
UK Release: 23rd October 2023 on VOD, released by Universal
An intimate portrait of actor Rock Hudson, one of Hollywood’s most celebrated leading men of the 1950’s and ‘60’s and an icon of Hollywood’s Golden Age, whose diagnosis and eventual death from AIDS in 1985 shocked the world, subsequently shifting the way the public perceived the pandemic. The film examines not only Hudson’s cinematic and cultural legacy but takes a rare and sometimes heart-breaking look at his private life through interviews with close friends and former lovers.
ROSODIUM
Starring: Thibaut Cattelin, Jules Bahloul, Benoît Rischewski, Anton Cisaruk
Director: Théodore Tomasz
Country: USA
UK Release: 23rd October 2023 on VOD, released by TLA Releasing
During a road trip with his two best friends, Noah, a young introverted engineer, meets “bad boy” Lohan, with whom he will share the last 7 days of his trip. The two boys are going to experience a real roller coaster of emotions. But after so much experience and after multiple sentimental rebounds, Noah will have to face the reality that not everything is always so rosey.
20,000 SPECIES OF BEES
Starring: Sofía Otero, Patricia López Arnaiz, Ane Gabarain
Director: Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren
Country: Spain
UK Release: 27th October 2023 on VOD, released by Curzon
During a summer in a village house linked to beekeeping, an eight-year-old trans girl and her mother experience revelations that will change their lives forever.
GOLDEN DELICIOUS
Starring: Chris Carson, Cardi Wong
Director: Jason Karman
Country: Canada
UK Release: 30th October 2023 on VOD, released by Peccadillo Pictures
For high school senior Jake, life’s pressures weigh heavily on his adolescent shoulders. If it’s not his father’s insistence he makes the basketball team, it’s his girlfriend making it abundantly clear she is ready to take their relationship to the next level. She’s even got the condoms to prove it. But when Aleks, a basketball-loving, out and proud cutie pie moves into the house across the street, Jake’s interest in shooting hoops and losing his virginity suddenly skyrockets. This is not quite what his father and girlfriend had in mind...
PUNCH
Starring: Tim Roth, Jordan Oosterhof, Conan Hayes
Director: Welby Ings
Country: New Zealand
UK Release: 13th November 2023 on VOD, released by Peccadillo Pictures
Seventeen-year-old Jim is a small-town boxing hero who carries the hopes and dreams of his father Stan on his shoulders. But when he becomes aware of his strong attraction to Whetu, a feisty gay Maori teenager ostracised from the local community, Jim starts to see the limitations of his world, and understand what he and Whetu must do to break free.
RUSTIN
Starring: Colman Domingo, Chris Rock, Jeffery Wright
Director: George C. Wolfe
Country: USA
UK Release: 17th November 2023 on VOD, released by Netflix
Biopic of gay civil rights activist Bayard Rustin who organised the 1963 March on Washington.
EISMAYER
Starring: Gerhard Liebmann, Luka Dimić, Julia Koschitz
Director: David Wagner
Country: Germany
UK Release: 20th November 2023 on VOD, released by Peccadillo Pictures
Inspired by true events, David Wagner’s acclaimed drama Eismayer tells the story of a secretly gay military officer whose tough façade conceals a clandestine double life. Sergeant Major Charles Eismayer is known and feared as the toughest training officer in the Austrian Armed Forces, ruthless with recruits and unwavering in his discipline, order and machismo. But when he unexpectedly starts to fall in love with Falak, a recruit who unashamedly embraces his homosexuality, Eismayer’s closeted existence is shaken to the core as he is forced to reconcile his fiercely masculine identity with desire for another man.
SALTBURN
Starring: Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, Carey Mulligan
Director: Emerald Fennell
Country: UK
UK Release: 17th November 2023 in cinemas, released by Warner Bros
A student at Oxford University finds himself drawn into the world of a charming and aristocratic classmate, who invites him to his eccentric family's sprawling estate for a summer never to be forgotten.
IN BED
Starring: Israel Ogalbo, Dean Miroshnikov, Moran Rosenblatt
Director: Nitzan Gilady
Country: Israel
UK Release: October 2023 in cinemas and VOD, released by Peccadillo Pictures
Guy and his best friend Joy are enjoying the gay pride parade to the fullest, when their bliss is abruptly put to an end by a deadly shooting. Fleeing the scene into the safety of Guy's home, they take in a fellow pride parader, Dan, who seems in shock. With the shooter still on the run, they enter a night full of sex, drugs and paranoia.
ALL OF US STRANGERS
Starring: Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal
Director: Andrew Haigh
Country: UK
UK Release: 26th January 2024 in cinemas
A screenwriter drawn back to his childhood home enters into a fledgling relationship with a mysterious neighbor as he then discovers his parents appear to be living just as they were on the day they died, 30 years before.
THE COLOUR PURPLE
Starring: Fantasia Barrino, Colman Domingo, Halle Bailey, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Taraji P. Henson, Elizabeth Marvel, Danielle Brooks
Director: Blitz Bazawule
Country: USA
UK Release: 26th January 2024 in cinemas
Musical adaptation of Alice Walker's novel about the life-long struggles of an African American woman living in the south during the early 1900s.
BONUS TRACK
Starring: Jack Davenport, Josh O'Connor, Susan Wokoma
Director: Julia Jackson
Country: UK
UK Release: TBC 2024 on VOD, released by Sky Cinema
Charming teen, an aspiring musician teams up with the son of a rock star to try and win the school talent show.
ARISTOTLE AND DANTE DISCOVER THE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE
Starring: Max Pelayo, Reese Gonzales, Eva Longoria
Director: Aitch Alberto
Country: USA
UK Release: TBC 2024 in cinemas
Mexican teenagers Aristotle Mendoza and Dante Quintana explore their friendship while struggling with racial and ethnic identity, sexuality and family relationships in 1987 El Paso, Texas.
RED ISLAND
Starring: Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Quim Gutiérrez, Charlie Vauselle
Director: Robin Campillo
Country: France
UK Release: TBC 2024 in cinemas
Thomas lives in a military base on colony of Madagascar. His parents and their circle, Gradually becomes aware of politics both territorial and sexual while finding an outlet for his imagination in the exploits of crimebuster Fantômette.