Perhaps for a genre that has spent decades being reduced to either tragedy or someone else’s fantasy, lesbian cinema has produced a surprisingly rich catalogue of films that are actually about, well, being human. While desire, obsession, bad decisions, first love, infidelity, heartbreak, aren't things particularly exclusive to women who love women. The difference is in how cinema has chosen to frame them, the gaze it portrays the stories through. Nevertheless, films about lesbian romances have become impossible to ignore.
Whether you want to watch movies because you are interested to watch something different, educate yourself as a man on the matter, be an empathetic viewer or are for the fantasy, the performances, the story, here are films around themes of same-sex relationship between women worth watching.
Directed by Mira Nair starring Nandita Das, Shabana Azmi, Javed Jaffrey, and Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Fire tells the story of Sita and Radha are young Indian women whose husbands choose celibacy or mistresses over their wives. This leads them to form an intimate, passionate relationship amidst a close-minded society.
Where To Watch: Amazon Prime Videos/YouTube
Directed by Peter Jackson and starring Kate Winslet, Heavenly Creatures is a true story of close friends who share a love of fantasy and literature. They conspire to kill one of the girls' mother when she tries to end the girls' intense and obsessive relationship.
Where To Watch: Prime Video
Reaching for the Moon (originally titled Flores Raras) is a 2013 biographical drama film based on the true, tumultuous love affair between American Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Elizabeth Bishop and Brazilian architect Lota de Macedo Soares.
Where To Watch: Prime Video
A 2013 romantic drama around a 15-year old teenager determined to fall in love and focused on boys, meets a blue-haired girl on the street who really piques her interest.
Where To Watch: Prime Video
In 1959, Reno, a Columbia professor, arrives to dissolve her marriage. What she finds instead is Cay Rivers and the film that follows changed cinema. Set in Reno, Nevada in 1959, Desert Hearts follows Vivian Bell (Helen Shaver), a Columbia University English professor who has come to Nevada to wait out the six-week residency required for a no-fault divorce. At Frances Parker's cattle ranch — the institution that made Reno the divorce capital of the world — she meets Cay Rivers (Patricia Charbonneau), a free-spirited casino dealer who lives outside the boundaries her stepmother and her era have drawn for her.
Directed by Donna Deitch and adapted from Jane Rule's 1964 novel Desert of the Heart, the film took five years and approximately $1.5 million to produce largely self-financed by Deitch through her documentary work. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1985 and was distributed in the United States by the Samuel Goldwyn Company, making it one of the first films in mainstream theatrical distribution to centre a lesbian romance with a narrative that refused to end in tragedy, pathology, or erasure.
Where To Watch: Apple Tv
Starring Kalki Koechlin and Sayani Gupta, Margarita With A Straw, beautifully presents story of Laila, a young student living with cerebral palsy, who falls in love with a woman and copes with her sexuality and discovers newer horizons in the process.
Where To Watch: PrimeVideo
After a car wreck in the Mulholland Drive, Rita, a dark-haired amnesiac, and Betty, a perky blonde actress, team up to find clues related to Rita's accident and ascertain her true identity.
Where To Watch: Prime Video
Released in 2015, Carol depicts the life of Therese Belivet who works at a department store in Manhattan where she encounters the beautiful Carol. Things take an unexpected turn when Therese develops strong feelings for Carol.
Where To Watch: Prime Video/Apple Tv/Netflix
Spanning across for stories each with a couple navigating their struggles, Ajeeb Daastaan's story with Konkona Sensharma and Aditi Rao Hydari explores the themes of class, caste and sex same love.
Where To Watch: Netflix
Directed by Faraz Ansari, the cast of Sheer Qorma including Divya Dutta, Shabana Azmiand, Swara Bashkar and revolves around love between non-binary people and same-sex people.
Where To Watch: MUBI
A reclusive gym manager falls for an ambitious bodybuilder, but their romance spirals into violence as they become entangled with her criminal family. Sheer Qorma a 2021 Indian short film Drama LGBT romance written and directed by Faraz Arif Ansari of Sisak fame and produced by Marijke Desouza. It is produced by Futterwacken Films. Starring Shabana Azmi, Divya Dutta and Swara Bhaskar, the film revolves around a woman and a non-binary person in love with each other.
Where To Watch: Prime Video
Set in France in the late 18th century on an isolated island in Brittany, a female painter is obliged to paint a wedding portrait of a young woman.
Where To Watch: Netflix
Set in 1999 with Geraldine Vishwanath and Margaret Quallay in the lead, Drive-Away Dolls are in search of a fresh start. Two women embark on an impromptu road trip to Tallahassee, Fla. However, things quickly go awry when they cross paths with a group of inept criminals along the way.
Where To Watch: Netflix
A 2004 American romantic-comedy, Saving Face, revolves around a gay Chinese-American and her traditionalist mother are reluctant to go public with secret loves that clash against cultural expectations.
Where To Watch: Apple Tv
Based on Alice Walker's novel The Colour Purple, the titular film follows a tale spanning forty years in the life of Celie, an African-American woman living in the South who survives incredible abuse and bigotry.
Where To Watch: Prime Video
Instead of showing saphhic lovers just for the plot gimmick, Accused, starring Konkona Sen Sharma and Pratibha Rannta, follows a famous gynaecologist in London who becomes the subject of severe accusations that endanger her professional and personal life leading to her wife embarking on a quest to reveal the truth.
Where To Watch: Netflix
Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga (2019) is a mainstream Bollywood romance starring Sonam Kapoor as Sweety, a closeted lesbian trying to navigate her conservative Punjabi family while embracing her truth.
Where To Watch: Netflix
Starring Ridhi Dogra as Asta, the critically acclaimed web series A Married Woman follows Asta (Ridhi Dogra), a married woman in 1990s India who experiences a profound awakening and falls in love with Piplica (Monica Dogra).
Where To Watch: Zee5
Based on true story, in The Favourite Queen Anne of England falls sick while her close aide Sarah Churchill oversees the country's important matters. Soon, things take a turn when Sarah's cousin Abigail starts serving the queen.
Where To Watch: Netflix