Lesbian Cinema

Pabst

Louise Brooks. Countess Geschwitz is one of cinema's first openly lesbian characters — depicted with sympathy.

Sagan

Schoolgirl's devotion to female teacher. Made in Weimar Berlin. One of the first sympathetic depictions. Banned by Nazis.

Mamoulian

Garbo as Swedish queen who abdicated. Hints at real-life relationships with women through coded gestures. Garbo insisted on the ambiguity.

Vadim

Carmilla adaptation. Vadim turned lesbian vampire into mainstream European cinema.

Wyler

Hepburn and MacLaine as teachers accused of lesbian relationship. Hollywood's first serious engagement — depicted as tragedy.

Aldrich

Aging soap actress whose lesbian relationship falls apart. First mainstream film with explicit lesbian content.

Metzger

Lesbian boarding school. Elegant.

Baker

Hammer Studios' Carmilla. Ingrid Pitt. Their first explicitly lesbian content. Commercial success led to sequels.

Franco

Psychedelic vampire erotica.

Kümel

Countess Báthory seduces honeymooning couple. Delphine Seyrig. Most beautiful lesbian vampire film.

Gantillon

Sorceress keeps women as companions. French fantasy. Dreamlike, bizarre, beautiful.

Fassbinder

Obsessive love in one apartment.

Larraz

Two female vampires lure men. Spanish-British. More explicit than Hammer with genuine atmosphere.

Rollin

Two women in a château lure a thief. Rollin's most beautiful film — genuine love story within vampire framework.

Makk

Two women journalists in 1950s Budapest. One of first Eastern European films to depict lesbian love during communism.

Tony Scott

Deneuve and Sarandon. Ancient vampire and new lover. Bauhaus performs 'Bela Lugosi's Dead.' Most stylish lesbian vampire entry.

Kurys

Based on Kurys' mother's story. Two married women in 1950s France. Huppert. Oscar-nominated. Tender.

Deitch

First American studio lesbian romance with a happy ending. 1959 Reno. Independently financed. A landmark.

Kaufman

Anaïs Nin's relationships. Uma Thurman. First film to receive NC-17 rating. Nin's bisexuality as artistic liberation.

Troche

Low-budget Chicago indie. Made by lesbians, about lesbians, for everyone. Community owned its representation.

Rozema

Professor at Christian college falls for circus performer. Explicit. Lesbian desire as joyful and unapologetic.

Julianna Lavin

Four women at bachelorette party. Dana Delany, Kim Cattrall.

Wachowskis

Before The Matrix. Lesbian neo-noir. Tilly and Gershon. Mainstream Hollywood lesbianism that wasn't tragedy.

Nicole Conn

Victorian England. Sculptor and poet meet on beach. Artistic and romantic.

Mira Nair

Two female friends become sexual rivals. Nair's sensual Indian period piece.

Cholodenko

Ally Sheedy as reclusive photographer. NY art world queer dynamics. Cholodenko later made The Kids Are All Right.

Moodysson

Swedish teen love story. Two girls in a small town. Won every Swedish award. Authentic, funny, deeply moving.

Babbit

Natasha Lyonne sent to conversion camp, falls in love. RuPaul appears. Camp aesthetic meets genuine heart.

Färberböck

True story. Jewish woman and Nazi officer's wife in 1943 Berlin. Most dangerous possible context for forbidden desire.

Pool

Boarding school romance. Piper Perabo. Pool (a lesbian director) brought genuine emotional weight.

Sax

BBC Sarah Waters adaptation. Victorian music hall. Explicit for British TV. Rachael Stirling.

Jean-Claude Brisseau

French. Two women use sexual transgression to climb social hierarchy in a bank.

Walsh

BBC Sarah Waters adaptation. Same source Park Chan-wook later used for The Handmaiden. Victorian con game and desire.

Sciamma

Sciamma's debut. Three teenage girls, swimming pool, first desire. Announced the most important voice in lesbian cinema.

Avi Nesher

Two women discover own voices in repressive Orthodox culture. Fanny Ardant.

Various

TV series. 16-year-old moves from NYC, struggles with sexual identity in suburbs.

Jean-Claude Brisseau

Sexually unsatisfied woman pursues experiments. Brisseau's female desire exploration.

Jesús Garay

Spanish. Woman in coma. Flashbacks reveal feelings for another woman.

Medem

Two women, one night, one Rome hotel room. Spanish. Entirely set in one room. Explicit and intimate.

Fernanda Cardoso

Former child actress at college falls for female professor. Coming-of-age.

Sciamma

10-year-old assigned female presents as boy during summer. Sciamma's most tender exploration of gender and desire.

Marialy Rivas

Chilean. Evangelical girl unmasked as fornicator seeks spiritual harmony.

Kechiche

3-hour lesbian love. 7-min sex scene. Palme d'Or.

Stacie Passon

After a blow to the head, suburban wife becomes a prostitute. Robin Weigert. Lesbian identity crisis.

Haynes

Blanchett and Mara in 1950s NY. Based on Highsmith's Price of Salt. Shot like Saul Leiter photograph. Most beautiful cinematography of decade.

Park Chan-wook

Lesbian con game. Explicit. Gorgeous. His masterpiece.

Lelio

Weisz and McAdams in Orthodox Jewish community. The 'spit' scene. Treats community with respect while showing how it suffocates desire.

Joachim Trier

Norwegian student's desire for women triggers supernatural abilities. Most elegant fusion of queer desire and genre.

Maxim Ford

Early 20th century. Painter's models explore sexuality. Finding liberation.

Kahiu

Kenyan. Banned in Kenya — first Kenyan film at Cannes. Kahiu sued government for 7-day screening. She won.

Westmoreland

Keira Knightley as French author. Affairs with women alongside literary career. Mainstream biopic with bisexual content.

Lanthimos

Colman, Weisz, Stone in Queen Anne's court. Power, jealousy, desire between women as dark comedy.

Jean-Claude Brisseau

Woman finds phone. Meets couple. Ex-lover appears. Brisseau's erotic games.

Sciamma

18th century lesbian romance. Most acclaimed love story of decade.

Lee

Winslet and Ronan as 19th century fossil hunter and companion. Queer desire existed in every era.

Fastvold

Two frontier wives in 1856. Kirby and Waterston. Desire expressed through letters when bodies can't meet.

DuVall

Mainstream Christmas rom-com. Kristen Stewart. Lesbian desire as studio holiday entertainment. The revolution itself.

Verhoeven

17th century nun. Verhoeven at 83. Virgin Mary dildo from wooden statue. Based on real academic research.