The 20 best movies and TV about LGBTQ+ history

Though the AIDS crisis has provided the background for several dramas, most of these tend to be set in the United States. Russell T. Davies, however, corrects this in It’s a Sin, which focuses on how the health crisis unfolded in the UK. Focusing on a group of young friends who find their lives brutally disrupted by the disease, it features some remarkable performances from the likes of Olly Alexander, Lydia West, and Stephen Fry. The series doesn’t pull any punches when showing the heartache and anguish of those years, even as it also demonstrates the extent to which people were determined to survive a plague. 

Pose is, in many ways, the fictional version of Jennie Livingston’s Paris is Burning, and, like its documentary predecessor, it tells the stories of a group of trans women and the ball culture of which they are a part. What’s more, it also focuses on their efforts to survive the vicissitudes of the ‘80s and ‘90s, when the AIDS crisis was still disproportionately affecting the LGBTQ+ community and BIPOC. While the series doesn’t shy away from the sadness of the period, there is also an equal emphasis on joy and perseverance, and the performances from the likes of Billy Porter, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, and Dominique Jackson allow this series to truly soar. 

For far too long, it was common to elide the presence of queer people from historical dramas or to paint them as sad and lonely and doomed. This makes the HBO series Gentleman Jack so refreshing, focusing on industrialist Anne Lister as she engages in a romance with a woman and works to protect her inheritance. Suranne Jones gives a masterful performance as Lister, and the series excels at showing modern audiences that there have always been queer people and that they have often managed to forge their own happiness even in a deeply homophobic world. 

The 2020s has seen a flowering of various TV series celebrating and exploring various aspects of LGBTQ+ history, and one of the most notable and wide-ranging of these is The Book of Queer. Created by noted gay historian Eric Cervini, it aims to provide viewers with a fascinating look at some of the most notable queer figures in history, ranging from the ancient Greek poet Sappho to the noted civil rights activist Bayard Rustin. Eschewing the dry narrative method so common in other documentaries of this type, The Book of Queer more than lives up to its name, providing audiences with a fun and campy look back at the past. 

There has long been a deep and enduring relationship between horror fiction and queerness, and this is the subject of the aptly-titled documentary series Queer for Fear. Throughout four episodes, viewers learn about the many ways that the fear of the queer other has influenced various horror genres, even as queer desires have also been given voice in those same fictions. It achieves the rare balance between breadth and depth, providing a fascinating overview of the ways that LGBTQ+ issues have been reflected in various time periods, ranging from the 19th-century works of Mary Shelley to the present.

Jennie Livingston’s Paris is Burning is one of the most important LGBTQ+ films that emerged during the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. With its focus on the drag ball culture of New York City, it’s something of a time capsule, capturing a vibrant subculture where playing with gender is a source of pleasure and potential liberation. Just as importantly, the documentary allows the subjects to speak about their own experiences, giving them a platform to speak about their lives, experiences, and struggles in ways they had previously been largely denied. The film remains a testament to the power of documentary to elevate queer voices.

For much of its history, Hollywood hasn’t been particularly friendly to LGBTQ+ people, and this troubling history is the subject of The Celluloid Closet, the documentary based on Vito Russo’s book of the same name. Though somewhat less condemnatory than the book, the film nevertheless excels at showing how the movie industry has often worked to pathologize and stigmatize LGBTQ+ people of all kinds. What makes it particularly valuable are the numerous interviews with those involved in the industry both in front of and behind the cameras, which help to shed valuable light on the inner workings of the famous dream factory.

Harvey Milk is arguably one of the most well-known gay politicians of the 20th century. His murder at the hands of Dan White was a shocking blow to those who loved and voted for him, and The Times of Harvey Milk is a fitting testament to his tremendous charisma and importance as a public figure. Far more than a hagiography, the 1984 film instead aims to help the viewer understand him as a person and as a politician. As a result, the viewer gains a renewed appreciation for just how important Milk was as a political figure and why he remains so highly-admired. 

The AIDS crisis was and is one of the most traumatizing pandemics in modern history, and it has left a particularly noticeable scar on the collective psyche of the LGBTQ+ community. How to Survive a Plague, directed by David France, is one of the best documentaries to examine the early days of the pandemic and groups like ACT UP and their efforts to raise awareness about it. Through archival news footage, the documentary immerses the viewer in this troubled and turbulent time, and it deserves a great deal of credit for shining a necessary light on those who played such a key role in advocating for the rights of AIDS patients. 

For far too long, the lives of Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, as well as their contributions to advocacy for equal rights for LGBTQ+ people, were swept under the rug. However, in the piercing and powerful The Life and Death of Marsha P. Johnson, they finally receive their due. What’s more, the film interrogates whether Johnson's death was a suıcide or whether it was a murder. The film is timely, and its deft movement between the past and present is a reminder of just how much has changed regarding LGBTQ+ acceptance and how much remains to be done.

Rock Hudson was, in many ways, the platonic ideal of 1950s Hollywood masculinity. However, he was also carrying on a double life, as he was secretly gay, an aspect of his life that only came out during the 1980s when he was dying of AIDS. The documentary Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed doesn’t shy away from this aspect of his story; it also shows the extent to which Hudson was able to live a remarkably happy and fulfilling life. The film contains remarkable interviews with those who knew him best, shedding necessary and valuable light on one of classic Hollywood’s biggest and most beloved stars. 

Few photographers have ignited as much controversy as Robert Mapplethorpe, who delighted in pushing the envelope in terms of what could be shown. In 2018, he received the biopic treatment in the film that bears his name, in which he is portrayed by Matt Smith, famous for playing Doctor Who. While the film does hit all of the notes one would expect of a biopic of his sort, it does excel at showing Mapplethorpe’s creative relationship to his work. Moreover, Smith’s performance is remarkably subdued, and he seems to come close to what Mapplethorpe must have been like in his personal life.

Colman Domingo delivers an inspired and electric performance as Bayard Rustin, one of the unsung heroes of the Civil Rights Movement. Though he was a good friend of Martin Luther King Jr. and was a key architect of the 1963 March on Washington, Rustin has often been pushed to the margins of traditional history. Here, he is the center of the story, and the film clarifies the extent to which Rustin was always concerned first and foremost with the movement rather than his own ego. A whirlwind of energy and movement, he is the type of person who will never rest so long as there is work to be done even if, as is so often the case, he gets little thanks for it.

Isaac Julien is one of Britain’s most visionary and innovative filmmakers, and in Looking for Langston, he produced a film that is at once beautiful, haunting, and meditative. Formally sophisticated and experimental, it uses various techniques — particularly a blend of footage from the 1920s and scripted portions — to explore Black gay life and artistry during the Harlem Renaissance. Noted poet Langston Hughes is something of a guiding spirit for the film, even though the film is not really a biography of him, per se. The film is a timely reminder of how integral Black queerness has been to 20th-century literature. 

The Showtime series Fellow Travelers, based on the novel of the same name by Thomas Mallon, follows Matt Bomer’s Hawkins Fuller and Jonathan Bailey’s Tim Laughlin as they begin a passionate but tempestuous love affair in the 1950s and periodically reconnect during the ensuing decades. There is a potent chemistry between the two leads that is impossible to deny, and their love plays out over some of the most notable LGBTQ+ events of the latter part of the 20th century. While history continually conspires to tear them apart, they keep finding a way to come back together, often with explosive and not always positive results. Fellow Travelers shows the remarkable things queer people have had to endure, as well as their indomitable strength.

The film My Policeman  is, at its heart, a tragic romance, focusing on the doomed love of Harry Styles’ policeman Tom Burgess and David Dawson’s Patrick Hazlewood. At the same time, it is also a rumination on the nature of queer history and how the middle of the 20th century was a perilous time for queer folks in the UK, where homosexuality was still punishable by the law. Indeed, the sense of ever-present danger makes the central love affair so powerful and so haunting, and the repressive past will haunt Tom and David right up into the film’s present.

The late Harvey Milk was one of the most noted gay rights activists of the 1970s, particularly in San Francisco. Milk,  directed by noted director Gus Van Sant and written by Dustin Lance Black, chronicles his rise and his untimely death at the hands of Dan White. Sean Penn delivers one of the most remarkable performances of his career, seeming to inhabit both the soul and body of Milk. It perfectly blends the political and the personal, allowing the viewer to understand Harvey Milk not just as a passionate politician (and the first openly gay man elected to office in California) but also as a human being with the same flaws and foibles as anyone else. 

The AIDS crisis was one of the most terrifying events of the 1980s, and it cost the lives of far too many gay and bisexual men. However, many survived to tell their stories, and they are the moving and haunting subject of the documentary We Were Here. Told through the voices of those on the ground as this public health and social crisis took shape, it’s a harrowing watch but all the more necessary because of its difficult and emotionally wrenching subject matter. More than anything else, it is a potent reminder of the resilient spirit queer people have always been forced to show in the face of social oppression and neglect. 

Created and written by Dustin Lance Black, When We Rise  is a remarkable piece of television focusing on several people who became involved in the gay rights movement, starting in the 1970s and moving up into the 2010s. It boasts a truly stunning cast, including Guy Pearce, Mary-Louise Parker, and Michael K. Williams. While, at times, it can be a bit didactic, it also has moments of genuine pathos and drama, and it highlights the many life-and-death struggles LGBTQ+ people have had to endure even into the modern era. Following the fates and lives of a set number of characters allows the viewer to see how history has a profound impact on individual lives.

Though overshadowed by Roland Emmerich’s later film of the same title, this 1995 film about the riots that helped to jumpstart the Gay Rights Movement pays much more attention to the BIPOC, who were a key part of the events that fateful night. At the same time, it focuses much of its dramatic energies around the romance between Matty Dean (newly arrived in NYC) and the drag queen La Miranda. Ultimately, Matty has to choose between the more radical kind of queer life offered by La Miranda and the more normative one offered by one of his love interests. Stonewall remains one of the best fictional representations of this pivotal event and a reminder of how much things have changed for the LGBTQ+ community and how much remains the same.