Kristen Stewart as a dirtbag with a mullet. Justice Smith as a TV-obsessed fanboy. River Gallo as an intersex sex worker out on the run. These are just a few of the queer stories that debuted at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, long a home for innovative LGBTQ+ storytelling.
More than 400 feature length queer films have screened at Sundance over the past four decades, including Paris Is Burning (1990), Bound (1996), But I'm a Cheerleader (1999), Y Tu Mamá También (2001), Call Me by Your Name (2017), And Then We Danced (2019), and Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen (2020), just to name a few. That's without mentioning pioneers such as Tom Kalin, Derek Jarman, and Gregg Araki who helped form the “New Queer Cinema” wave that was defined as a movement by film scholar B. Ruby Rich on a Sundance panel in 1992.
Which new queer features will join them — and the likes of Passages, The Stroll and Kokomo City from last year — to help shape queer culture anew in 2024? Ninety-one91 projects aired during the festival this year, including 32 by filmmakers who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community. With so many talented queer voices in the mix, that means narrowing down the best of the best from Sundance 2024 is no easy task. But at a time when marginalized experiences are being suppressed more than ever across the globe, having this many queer stories to choose from can only be a good thing.
Find out which new additions to the queer Sundance canon made the cut by delving into some of the best LGBTQ+ films from this year's festival below.
Love Lies Bleeding
Saint Maud (2019) director Rose Glass shatters any notion she might be a one-hit wonder with Love Lies Bleeding, a sapphic sophomore effort that channels the neo-noir criminal underbelly of Bound with a gut punch romance. Kristen Stewart and Katy O'Brian star as gym manager Lou and bisexual bodybuilder Jackie whose love for each other leads them and us on a dizzying journey into small-town Americana through a lust-driven, at times unsettling queer lens. "Be gay, do crime" indeed.
I Saw the TV Glow
A teenager named Owen (Justice Smith) is introduced to a mysterious late-night TV show that gradually shifts his reality with glimpses of something strange and even frightening that lurks just beyond the screen's eerie glow. Through this intriguing premise, non-binary writer-director Jane Schoenbrun has created a surreal homage to 90s nostalgia that speaks to the present with a resonant trans allegory that tackles identity and dysphoria through a bold, unhinged nightmare prism.
Sebastian
Finnish-British writer-director Mikko Mäkelä makes his Sundance debut with Sebastian starring Ruraridh Mollica as Max, a writer whose very hands-on research into sex work threatens to take over his life completely. Mollica brings much-needed nuance to this fearless breakout role while Jonathan Hyde is achingly tender as the older gentleman who connects with "Sebastian" through sex, but also something deeper.
Layla
Layla follows a struggling British-Palestinian drag artist whose all-consuming new relationship tests who they are and how they perceive themselves in and out of queer spaces. British-Iraqi writer/director Amrou Al-Kadhi brings a personal specificity to this love story that shines like rhinestones with a message of self-love and the healing power of family, chosen or otherwise. While it could be a tad weightier in some of its themes, breakout star Bilal Hasna grounds the film with charm and exuberance.
Will & Harper
After Harper Steele came out as trans, Will Ferrell embarked on an intimate road trip across middle America with his friend of 30 years to explore and process their relationship anew with help from director Josh Greenbaum. Ferrell's acceptance of Steele and his desire to learn more is the kind of cis allyship we don't see enough of from Hollywood's elite, and the film's sincerity also speaks to joyful aspects of the trans experience that are rarely captured on screen.
Stress Positions
Writer/director/star and all round powerhouse Theda Hammel returns to Sundance in a whirl of chaos with Stress Positions, a COVID-era pandemic comedy set in 2020 Brooklyn. Protagonist Terry Goon (John Early) is stuck caring for his 19 year old nephew from Morocco in his ex-husband's house, but Bahlul (Qaher Harhash) is a beautiful model so just about everybody in Terry's life wants to meet him — while antagonizing Terry in the process.
FRIDA
RBG (2018) editor Carla Gutiérrez turns her hand to directing with FRIDA, a visually astonishing documentary that goes where no film on Frida Kahlo has gone before. For the first time ever, Kahlo's story is told in her own words via hitherto-unreleased excerpts from her diary that are brought to life through archive photos and her own unforgettable artwork which moves and shifts and blends to reflect her interior world with thoughtfulness and compassion.
Love Machina
Love and AI aren't obvious bedfellows, but in Peter Sillen's latest documentary, the connection shared between Futurists Martine and Bina Rothblatt transcends the physical and even reality itself as they strive to live on together eternally in digital form. While Love Machina lacks rigor when it comes to the scope of what AI could mean for humanity's future, Martine's story as a hugely successful trans pioneer is a fascinating and even inspiring look at ambition in the present day.
Ponyboi
Ponyboi hits the usual neon-drenched beats of American crime stories, weaving grit and violence into a somewhat familiar underdog tale, except the underdog in question is anything but. Writer/producer/actor River Gallo brings a fierce yet tender humanity to Ponyboi, a Latinx intersex sex worker whose defiant search for happiness involves a range of misfits played by Murray Bartlett, Pose's Indya Moore, and Teen Wolf's Dylan O'Brien, who quite literally bares it all as a sleazy gangster you'll love to hate.
Desire Lines
Billed as a hybrid documentary, Desire Lines follows the dream-like journey of an Iranian-American trans man who records queer history while simultaneously time-traveling back into it. Trans scholar Jules Rosskam folds real interviews into the relationship that builds between actors Aden Hakimi and Theo Germaine, but the end result isn't as abstract or impenetrable as that might sound. In fact, this is exactly the kind of bold experimental queer art we need to see more of in 2024.
In The Summers
Alessandra Lacorazza’s deeply personal debut feature spans the formative years of two sisters who visit their father every summer in New Mexico. The result is a tender examination of love at its most fraught and even volatile with a deeply moving performance from Puerto Rican rapper Residente who bridges each era with compassion for a man struggling to connect. Mutt (2023) star Lio Mehiel and The Flash's (2023) Sasha Calle play his children at their oldest and most weary with a painful honesty that will feel all-too real for many.
