30 of the best lesbian films of all time
Perhaps it’s trite to say that “representation matters,” but some things are clichés because they’re true. The first time I ever saw lesbians onscreen was when my high school’s Gay Bisexual Straight Alliance played part of the first scene of the original L Word series (the “sweet little figs” scene, in case you were wondering — the girls who get it, get it.) Even so, it wasn’t until years later, when I first saw Blue Is the Warmest Colour, that I actually found a queer story that reminded me of my own.
In the decade since, LGBTQ representation in media has only continued to proliferate. And though I’m now a fully out adult who can hang out with other queer people in real life, instead of just at the cinema, the excitement of discovering a story in which I can see myself hasn’t waned at all over the years. If anything, every new queer film I stumble across brings me even more delight than the last. If you’re in the market for some solid sapphic cinema, let this list of iconic lesbian and bisexual films be your guide.
Gia (1998)
Widely considered the world’s first supermodel, openly queer Gia Carangi rocketed to stardom in the late 1970s, only for her life to spiral out of control after she became addicted to heroin and later contracted HIV — which led to her death from AIDS in 1986. A little over a decade later, this biopic about her life and love affairs helped catapult a young Angelina Jolie (herself openly queer) into the spotlight.
Love Lies Bleeding (2024)
This romantic thriller — starring Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brian — has all the makings of an instant sapphic classic. When drifter Jackie (O’Brian) rolls into the small-town New Mexico gym that Lou (Stewart) manages, their instant chemistry — and Jackie’s pursuit of raw physical power at all costs — quickly escalates into a trail of violence, with bodies piling up in the couple’s wake.
Mosquita y Mari (2012)
At first glance, teenagers and new neighbors Mosquita (Fenessa Pineda) and Mari (Venecia Troncoso) couldn’t be more different. But when Mari faces expulsion after saving Mosquita from a problem at school, the two begin to forge a friendship that slowly deepens into something more.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
Director Celine Sciamma’s queer bona fides were already known to film buffs by the time she released Portrait of a Lady on Fire, but her 2019 masterpiece introduced her to the public in a big way. The historical romance centres on Marianne (Noémie Merlant), a young painter hired to do a marriage portrait of a noblewoman named Heloise (Adèle Haenel), only to fall in love with Heloise herself.
Princess Cyd (2017)
When headstrong teenager Cyd’s (Jessie Pinnick) parents send her away to spend the summer with her aunt Miranda (Rebecca Spence), an author of religious books, they’re probably not anticipating a summer of queer sexual awakening for their teenage daughter — but life rarely follows a plan. Over the course of the summer, Cyd falls for a local nonbinary barista named Katie (Ro White), and she and her aunt gradually bring out new sides of each other.
Stud Life (2012)
Set in London’s Black queer scene, Stud Life follows butch photographer JJ (T’Nia Miller) as she falls for a femme woman named Elle who may be guarding several secrets. But the beating heart of this movie is JJ’s friendship with her roommate and business partner Seb (Kyle Treslove), a white gay man who is clearly more of a family to JJ than her absent blood relatives.
Duck Butter (2018)
In an echo of Andrew Haigh’s seminal film Weekend (2011), which charts two gay men’s escalating relationship over the course of two days, Duck Butter — co-written by star Alia Shawkat and director Miguel Arteta — explores how quickly intimacy can evolve over the course of 24 hours. After Nima (Shawkat) meets Sergio (Laia Costa) at a gay bar, what began as a one-night stand becomes more complicated when Sergio proposes a one-day experiment to test out a possible relationship.
The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018)
Miseducation follows the titular character’s (Chloë Grace Moretz) experience at a gay conversion therapy camp, where she meets and befriends fellow “campers” Jane (Sasha Lane) and Adam (Forrest Goodluck). Adapted from the Emily M. Danforth novel of the same name by Appropriate Behavior director Desiree Akhavan, the film is a tender, earnest, beautifully shot examination of the torture routinely inflicted on queer kids in the name of “fixing” them.
Tig (2015)
These days, comedian Tig Notaro is practically a household name. It’s a notoriety she owes almost entirely to her breast-cancer diagnosis in 2012. After channeling her feelings about her diagnosis into a stand-up comedy set that quickly went viral, Notaro embarked on a year of cancer treatments, grief processing, and a burgeoning new relationship—all of which is captured on film in this quietly stunning slice-of-life documentary.
Happiest Season (2020)
Kristen Stewart brings us the lesbian festive film we never knew we needed. In 2020's Happiest Season, Stewart stars as the very anti-Christmas Abby, who's visiting the family of her girlfriend Harper for the first time. All seems the normal amount of insufferable until Abby realizes that Harper isn't yet out to her family, a secret that ends up taking over the holiday and almost tearing the couple apart. This is a Christmas movie, though, so a happy ending is in store. Aubrey Plaza, Dan Levy, and Alison Brie also star.
Bound (1996)
Long before we knew them as queer women, the Wachowskis made an indelible contribution to the sapphic film canon with their directorial debut, Bound, a heist movie featuring Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly as a pair of lovers getting ready to make a run for it. The movie itself is a sexy, stylish neo-noir; also noteworthy is the Wachowskis’ hiring of Susie Bright, a queer sex educator known as the “Pauline Kael of porn,” to choreograph the sex scenes between Corky (Gershon) and Violet (Tilly)—a decision that paid off handsomely in the final film.
Desert Hearts (1986)
When university professor Vivian Bell (Helen Shaver) travels to Reno for an extended stay, she’s just doing what any woman trying to leave her husband in the 1940s would do: posting up at a “divorce ranch” long enough to qualify for residency in Nevada, the state with the easiest, quickest marital-dissolution process in the nation. But Vivian gets more than she bargained for when she falls in love with Cay Rivvers (Patricia Charbonneau), a sculptor and the divorce ranch’s adopted daughter. One of the first wide-release films to positively portray a lesbian relationship, Desert Hearts has a permanent spot in the sapphic cinema canon.
The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love (1995)
Featuring Laurel Holloman before she was The L Word’s Tina Kennard, The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love isn’t a movie about coming out—although love interest Evie (Nicole Ari Parker) does come out to her popular friends—or about overcoming homophobia, even though protagonist Randy (Holloman) lives with her aunt because her mother kicked her out of the house for being gay. Instead, it’s a sweet, earnest, wryly funny story about two teenagers falling in love for the first time.
Shiva Baby (2021)
There was a shift in the air when Shiva Baby first dropped. Director Emma Seligman's 2020 debut centers around a bisexual Jewish teen named Danielle (Rachel Sennott) reluctantly attending a family shiva, where she's quickly thrown into the awkward scenario of being stuck in the same house as her ex-girlfriend (portrayed by a pre-The Bear Molly Gordon) and her current sugar daddy and his wife (Danny Deferrari and Dianna Agron). Between Sennott's comic chops and a stellar supporting cast, Shiva Baby is the unhinged family reunion you'll actually want to relive.
Bottoms (2023)
Starring millennial comedy queens Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri, Bottoms follows two teen best friends on a quest to, well, get laid. The pair start an after-school fight club disguised as a self-defense class in order to get close to the girls they're lusting over, which doesn't end well once their true intentions are found out. A case study in the messiness of modern dating, the 2023 comedy, which also stars Havana Rose Liu, Nicholas Galitzine, and Kaia Gerber, has become an instant queer classic.
Drive-Away Dolls (2024)
Starring Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan and directed by one half of the Coen Brothers (that would be Ethan), Drive Away Dolls is about two queer best friends escaping heartbreak with an old-fashioned roadtrip to Tallahassee, Florida. Once they realize that their drive-away rental was accidentally swapped with one meant for a gang of criminals, the besties turn into quasi-bandits, aiming to escape the chaos following them all the way to Florida.
Lovesong (2016)
In Lovesong, a young, exhausted mother named Mindy (Jena Malone) is fed up with her husband's absentee parenting and goes on a rogue roadtrip with her toddler daughter and longtime best friend Sarah (Riley Keough). During their getaway, the two women realize they have hidden feelings for each other, which results in a period of avoidance and awkwardness. They meet again at the wedding of Mindy's now grown daughter over a decade later, and reconnect and reflect on their night together and what it meant. It's a touching film that highlights the delicate balance between friendship and romance.
Carol (2015)
Based on Patricia Highsmith’s classic 1952 novel The Price of Salt, Todd Haynes’s splashy film adaptation is a real treat for the senses. Rooney Mara stars as Therese Belivet, a 1950s shopgirl and aspiring photographer who falls for housewife Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett) when the latter accidentally-on-purpose leaves a glove at her store counter. Cue the whirlwind romance, epic road trip, and bittersweet resolution.
Pariah (2011)
Dee Rees’s deeply moving, beautifully shot debut film follows Alike (Adepero Oduye), a 17-year-old girl living in Brooklyn, as she comes into her identity as a butch lesbian. Her mother (Kim Wayans) and father (Charles Parnell) are, respectively, hostile and indifferent; her friendship with her openly lesbian best friend, Laura (Pernell Walker), is complicated by Laura’s own feelings for her. As she navigates first love, ostracism, and heartbreak, Alike finds solace in her English class and a growing passion for poetry.
But I’m a Cheerleader (1999)
Directed by Jamie Babbit, But I’m a Cheerleader is a campy, colorful, bighearted must-see of lesbian cinema. When 17-year-old cheerleader Megan’s (Natasha Lyonne) conservative family confronts her with suspicions that she might be gay, she is aghast. But after her parents ship her to a conversion therapy camp called True Directions, Megan gradually realizes they just might have been right about her—and as she falls for fellow camper Graham (Clea DuVall), she begins to question whether it’s really such a terrible thing to be a lesbian after all.
Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013)
Ever since it premiered at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, Blue Is the Warmest Colour has been a wildly polarising film—as much for its three-hour runtime as for its graphic seven-minute sex scene. Still, this movie (adapted from the French graphic novel of the same name) is a tour de force, featuring masterful performances from Adèle Exarchopoulos as a French teenager discovering her sexuality and Léa Seydoux as the confident older lesbian with whom she falls madly in love.
The Watermelon Woman (1996)
The Watermelon Woman is a (somewhat meta) romantic dramedy following Cheryl (writer-director Cheryl Dunye), a video-store clerk who decides to make a documentary about a Black “mammy” actress from an old-Hollywood film in which she is credited only as “The Watermelon Woman.” Cheryl sets about tracking down the actress, all while navigating a new relationship with Diana (Guinevere Turner), a customer at the video store. A touchstone of what became known as the new queer-cinema movement, The Watermelon Woman was the first feature film directed by an out Black lesbian.
Saving Face (2004)
In this quintessential lesbian romance, Wilhelmina “Wil” Pang (Michelle Krusiec) has a close but contentious relationship with her mother, Gao (Joan Chen), who doesn’t know Wil is a lesbian. At a gathering her mother forces her to attend, Wil is drawn to dancer Vivian (Lynn Chen), but she soon learns Vivian is her boss’s daughter. Shortly after, Wil finds out that Gao has been kicked out of the home she shared with her father, Wil’s grandfather, for getting pregnant out of wedlock—forcing her to come stay with Wil.
The Handmaiden (2016)
Acclaimed Korean horror director Park Chan-wook changed tack in 2016 with The Handmaiden, an adaptation of Sarah Waters’s historical lesbian novel Fingersmith. It follows a romance between Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee) and her handmaiden, Sook-hee (Kim Tae-ri)—who is actually a pickpocket hired by a mysterious con man to convince Hideko to marry him. But Hideko has secrets of her own, and several reversals over the course of the film’s plot reveal that all is not as it seems.
D.E.B.S. (2004)
The titular acronym stands for Discipline Energy Beauty Strength—the name of a clandestine paramilitary academy founded to train promising young women in the art of espionage. The story starts when four D.E.B.S. are tasked with surveilling supercriminal Lucy Diamond (Jordana Brewster)—only for one of the girls, Amy (Sara Foster), to fall in love with Lucy on the job.
I Can’t Think Straight (2008)
It can be trite at times, but I Can’t Think Straight is at its core a winsome story of cross-cultural love and defying familial expectations. While preparing for her wedding, wealthy Christian Palestinian Tala (Lisa Ray) meets her male best friend’s girlfriend, a shy British Indian Muslim woman named Leyla (Sheetal Sheth). They strike up a fast friendship that soon escalates into something more, and both women are forced to decide what is more important: their sense of filial duty or their desire to live truthfully.
Disobedience (2017)
Disobedience chronicles a story of forbidden love between two women from a conservative religious community. When Ronit’s (Rachel Weisz) father dies, she travels to London and returns to the Orthodox Jewish community of her upbringing—the community that ostracized her years ago after catching her with another woman. Once there, she’s startled to discover that the woman she was caught with, Esti (Rachel McAdams), is now married to their childhood friend Dovid (Alessandro Nivola).
Signature Move (2017)
In a departure for horror director Jennifer Reeder, Signature Move is a queer dramedy about a Muslim Pakistani woman named Zaynab (cowriter Fawzia Mirza), who falls in love with a Mexican woman named Alma (Sari Sanchez). The catch: Zaynab, who also serves as her mom Parveen’s (Shabana Azmi) caretaker, isn’t out to her mother. When Zaynab’s cloistered life threatens to derail her romance with Alma, she decides to take a page from Alma’s family’s lucha libre community in hopes of winning Alma back.
The Colour Purple (1985)
Based on the iconic Alice Walker book, The Colour Purple is a cultural touchstone. Set in the early 20th century, Steven Spielberg’s film follows the epic journey of Celie (Whoopi Goldberg) as she struggles to make her way out of an abusive marriage. Central to the story is Celie’s love affair with Shug Avery (Margaret Avery), a showgirl who helps Celie leave her husband.
Inappropriate Behaviour
Desiree Akhavan’s sophomore film, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, may be better known, but it’s her debut that best showcases her singular voice and uniquely queer perspective. Told out of chronological order, Appropriate Behaviour is the story of a breakup and its aftermath. As Shirin (Akhavan) struggles to move on from her first queer relationship with Maxine (Rebecca Henderson), she acts out, explores her bisexuality, confronts her family’s quiet homophobia, and begrudgingly begins to grow up.
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