By Kat Besse, Open Doors Facilitator

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I love movies. Good, bad and in between. I love the experience of discovering a new favorite, I love going to a movie theatre, especially an old one with a story. And I love hearing about my friends’ favorite genres and making curated recommendations.  

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For years, my partner and I have observed Monday Movie Night. Most of the time we will pick a monthly theme with choices ranging from “Movies directed by a woman” to “Stars an Actor from The West Wing” (my partner’s favorite show). And obviously, for June we always go with a queer movie month.  

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Last year, I had the realization that June would have 5 Mondays in it. Five chances to watch new queer movies along with some old favorites. And then, another realization – we didn’t want to do this alone! So, my partner and I created a Pride Movie Series. We invited our friends over for every Monday in June to experience queer art with us.  

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And we are lucky enough to have 5 Mondays again this June! I got to pick another 5 movies to share with my community.  

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To me, this is an important and meaningful responsibility. While there are LOTS of queer movies out there, many of them are tragic, hard to find, underfunded or underwritten or just not that good. So, I created a list of criteria when curating my movie series.  

No tragedies – we are focusing on queer joy here!  

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Limit the coming out stories – we have so many other stories to tell.  

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No more than one high school movie – it's a precious time and deserves to be spoken about but again, these stories are mostly about coming out.  

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As best as I can, include a diverse gender spectrum and BIPOC storylines – this can be tough, there are precious few non-tragic, fun, well-done QBIPOC stories out there and even fewer trans stories.  

The queerness cannot be just implied – no “queer-coded” or “they're supposed to be gay” stories please.  

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And lastly, push past the overplayed – although they are iconic classics for a reason, I will not be playing But I’m a Cheerleader or Call Me By Your Name anytime soon.  

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With these rules to guide me, I’ve created a very long list of potentials, and it has been my happy task to watch new queer movies every year and whittle them down to my top 5.  

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My growing list includes such films as The Hunger, a 1983 vampire arthouse film starring Susan Surandon and David Bowie, Kiss of the Spider-Woman, a beautifully told musical from last year starring Jennifer Lopez and set mostly in an Argentinian prison, and Plan B – a movie about two young women going on a quest to get the morning after pill at their closest Planned Parenthood that happens to be out of state.

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This has been such a fun journey for me, not only to see what new queer movies there are out there but also what movies have been forgotten. What stories we’ve deemed worthy of telling and where we are woefully lacking representation. I am so excited for this tradition to keep moving and changing.  

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So, without further ado, please find my last two years of selections below via the amazing flyers made by my partner. I’d love to hear thoughts and suggestions, although my favorite response to my picks continues to be “I haven’t seen any of these!”. See you at the movies!

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2025

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2026

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