Michael is a 1924 feel-bad German silent film about an evil twink, the manipulative older man who loves him, and the repulsive, gold-digging countess who wrecks it all, directed by Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer. I'm fascinated that it exists, but I never want to see it again.

Sergio De León’s 2025 film Siempre Vuelven (Keep Coming Back) is now on DVD. The atmospheric film about young Emilio, who is tasked with caring for his deceased mother’s pigeon dovecote, combines a story of rural Uruguayan life with surreal imagery reminiscent of James Bidgood’s Pink Narcissus.

Jaume Claret Muxart’s Estrany riu is one of the most beautifully allegorical and unconventional coming of age/coming out films that I’ve encountered. It’s more of a symphony than a film, a collection of dreamlike vignettes involving a mysterious young man (river sprite?) who may not actually exist.

Falscher Bekenner, a 2005 German film directed by Christoph Hochhäusler is about a young man who, bored with his suburban life, confesses to a crime he did not commit. A hypnotic, surreal, and at times unnerving film, it screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.

“The worst thing was not homophobia, but indifference.”

-French filmmaker Robin Campillo, director of the 2017 film 120 BPM, which stars the always excellent Nahuel Pérez Biscayart.

I'm surprised to learn there's a Nordic gay film festival in Seattle, but how could they omit the films of the great Norwegian superduo Svend Wam and Petter Vennerød? The pair collaborated on 14 films, beginning with Lasse & Geir (1976) and ending with Sebastian (1995).

I had a chance to see the new director's cut of Todd Stephens' 2001 film Gypsy 83, and it left me very, very emotional! I first saw it 20 years ago, and it's truly a special film. I'm working on a little essay about it all.

Simone Barbès ou la vertu, directed by Marie-Claude Treilhou, is a 1980 film about a cranky lesbian usher working at a Parisian adult cinema. It's one of the most weirdly mesmerizing films I've ever seen, and it's finally getting a Blu-ray release.

www.orbitdvd.com/products/sim...

The opening sequence of Luis Ortega's 2024 film El Jockey features the 1984 song "Sin Disfraz" (Without Disguise) by the Argentine new wave band Virus. The song was co-written by Virus singer Federico Moura, partly in response to the record label's insistence that Moura conceal his homosexuality.

Fiume o morte!, a 2025 Croatian film directed by Igor Bezinović, is probably the most innovative documentary I've seen, using the current residents of Rijeka in absurd reenactments of poet Gabriele D'Annunzio's cocaine-fueled, carnivalesque, and ultimately brutal occupation of the city in 1919/1920.

Levan Akin's romantic drama And Then We Danced is a truly exquisite film, particularly the final dance sequence, a breathtaking act of unapologetic, defiant individualism with a capital "fuck you."