The Best LGBT+ Movies on Netflix Right Now

In celebration of Pride Month, we compiled a list of the best Fresh LGBTQ films you can watch on Netflix right now. On this list, you’ll find award-winning films, historical dramas, and coming-of-age stories

Moonlight (2016)

Moonlight is hard to sum up into a sentence. It’s better described as a list of words: breathtaking, visceral, touching, devastating. The story of a young black gay man growing was handily the most powerful film of 2016 (sorry La La Land), and it’s one of those Best Picture winners whose gravitas only continues to swell with time

Dear Ex (誰先愛上他的).

IMDb Rating	8.6
Genre	Comedy, Drama, Romance
Starring	Qiu Ze, Xie Yingxuan, Chen Rushan, Huang Shengqiu
Director	Huang Shengqiu
TV Rating	R
Running Time	101 minutes
Language	Chinese, Mandarin

A teenaged boy named Song finds himself in a twisted triangle when it is revealed that his late father’s primary insurance beneficiary is his secret male lover. As Song finds his allegiance caught between the two battling widow and widower, his mother struggles with her grief and possession, determined not to lose another loved one’s favor to the elusive man.

Carol (2015)

IMDb Rating	7.2
Genre	Comedy, Drama, Romance
Starring	Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Sarah Paulson
Director	Todd Haynes
TV Rating	R
Running Time	118 minutes
Language	Chinese, Mandarin

In 1952 New York, recently divorced Carol finds her passions reinvigorated after meeting a young photographer named Therese. When Carol’s ex-husband learns about the affair, he threatens to invoke a “morality clause” to obtain full custody of their daughter.

Much like director Todd Haynes’s 2002 film Far From Heaven, Carol is simultaneously an homage to 1950s American filmmaking and a critique of 1950s American social mores. The movie earned literally hundreds of award nominations, and it won the 2015 Golden Tomato from Rotten Tomatoes for the best romance movie.

Funny Boy (2020)

IMDb Rating	6.2
Genre	Drama
Starring	Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Sarah Paulson
Director	Deepa Mehta
TV Rating	TV-MA
Running Time	98 minutes
Language	English, Sinhala ,Tamil

In the years leading up to the 1983 Sri Lankan Civil War, a Tamil youth named Arjie falls in love with a male classmate. Coming out as gay can be tough no matter where you are, but the stakes are especially high when you’re a teenager growing up amid a warzone.

Funny Boy doesn’t delve too deep into the historical conflict that serves as the film’s backdrop. If you’re more interested in Sri Lankan history, you should read the novel it’s based on by Shyam Selvadurai.

My Days of Mercy (2019)

IMDb Rating	6.5
Genre	Drama, Romance
Starring	Kate Mara, Elliot Page, Amy Seimetz, Brian Geraghty, Elias Koteas
Director	Tali Shalom Ezer
TV Rating	R
Running Time	108 minutes
Language	English

Mercy is a woman unwilling to offer her own mercy to the criminal who killed her father’s police partner. Across from her, Lucy fights for the innocence of her incarcerated father, convinced that he did not end her mother’s life. They meet in a line of picketing protests, where flirtations quickly make way for more romantic endeavors.

This is a profoundly romantic movie also dealing with the impact of grief on our daily lives. Fittingly for a subject on death, it concerns itself on the living and how people live in the face of their mortality. The interchanging lines on the death penalty are strangely hushed at points, Tim Robbins’s Dead Man Walking (1995) dealt with the subject more abjectly and thoroughly.

The Boys in the Band (2020)

IMDb Rating	6.8
Genre	Drama, Comedy
Starring	Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto, Matt Bomer, Andrew Rannells, Charlie Carver
Director	Tali Shalom Ezer
TV Rating	R
Running Time	122 minutes
Language	English

The trajectory of The Boys in the Band is one of the most beautiful parts of the story. The original, an Off-Broadway play from 1968, was revived and put on Broadway. It received critical acclaim. The same cast adapted it into a film, which now lives on Netflix and captures the essence of being a queer man in the ’60s—a time when too many people’s identities were erased from the public eyes.

The Half of It (2020)

IMDb Rating	6.9
Genre	Comedy
Starring	Leah Lewis, Daniel Diemer, Alexxis Lemire
Director	Alice Wu
TV Rating	R
Running Time	104 minutes
Language	English

Nancy Drew’s Leah Lewis stars as Ellie Chu, a shy and introverted Asian-American student who agrees to help the school jock (Daniel Diemer) woo his crush. Plot twist alert: Ellie likes her too. Netflix’s official synopsis states: “In the process, each teaches the other about the nature of love as they find connection in the most unlikely of places.” The Half Of It received highly positive reviews upon release and won the Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival.

How I Felt When I Saw That Girl (Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga)

This heartwarming Bollywood romantic comedy-drama tells the story of Sweety, a young Punjabi woman and closeted lesbian, on her quest for acceptance from her family. In love with another woman but pressured by her family to marry a man, Sweety finds her fate ironically saved by a potential suitor who assists her in coming out by crafting a romantic play about the two women.

IMDb Rating	5.5
Genre	Comedy
Starring	Anil Kapoor, Sonam K Ahuja, Rajkummar Rao
Director	Shelly Chopra Dhar
TV Rating	R
Running Time	120 minutes
Language	Hindi

Other People (2016)

IMDb Rating	6.8
Genre	Comedy, Drama
Starring	Jesse Plemons, Molly Shannon, Bradley Whitford
Director	Chris Kelly
TV Rating	R
Running Time	97 minutes
Language	Hindi

A semi-autobiographical look at director Chris Kelly’s family, Other People focuses on David Mulcahey (Jesse Plemons), a 29-year-old gay man who moves back home to Sacramento to take care of his mother, Joanne (Molly Shannon), who is in the advanced stages of leiomyosarcoma. There, he faces the homophobia of his religious and ultra-conservative family while dealing with the inevitable death of his mother.

Alex Strangelove

IMDb Rating	6.3
Genre	Comedy
Starring	Daniel Doheny, Antonio Marziale, Madeline Weinstein
Director	Craig Johnson
TV Rating	R
Running Time	99 minutes
Language	English

This starts out like any other teen movie: high schooler Alex Truelove (Daniel Doheny) wants to lose his virginity to his girlfriend. But this one has a twist. He ends up meeting Elliot (Antonio Marziale) and falling for him. Fear not though—this still has all the teen movie maxims: a little angst, cute moments, and exploration of sexuality.

Love, Simon

IMDb Rating	7.6
Genre	Comedy
Starring	Nick Robinson, Josh Duhamel, Jennifer Garner
Director	Greg Berlanti
TV Rating	R
Running Time	110 minutes
Language	English

Love, Simon has been praised for its long-overdue Hollywood storyline about a gay teenage romance starring Nick Robinson, Katherine Langford, and your faves Josh Duhamel and Jennifer Garner. While dealing with a blackmailer who has threatened to “out” Simon to the entire school, the teen is also attempting to balance home life and the classmate he fell in love with online. You know, the usual!

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