Queer Stories, Lesbian Romances, Gay Dramas… Here Are têtu·’s Editors’ Favorite Films of 2025
- Nicolas’s Pick: Alpha, by Julie Ducourneau
Can one still make a great film about AIDS after Plaire, aimer et courir vite or 120 battements par minute? Julia Ducournau rose to the challenge with Alpha, describing the atmosphere of the 1980s through the transformation of its characters into marble statues, victims of a disease whose name is taboo. The gay character played by Finnegan Oldfield, a teacher whose partner is infected, tenderly calls us back to a fidelity that endures the trial.
- Nicolas’s Pick: La Petite Dernière, by Hafzia Herzi
La Petite Dernière follows Fatima, a young woman from a Muslim family in the suburbs, torn between her faith, her family life, and the discovery of a lesbian desire that she still struggles to name. What Hafsia Herzi achieves in her film is to never crush the eponymous novel’s narrative under the weight of explanation. Refusing the didactic narrative device, the adaptation respects the internal conflicts of the original text: Fatima moves at the crossroads of multiple identities that learn to coexist, without hierarchy or resolution. The film thus works the margins and the interstices, where identity is lived rather than proclaimed.
- Nicolas’s Pick: Love Me Tender, by Anna Cazenave-Cambet
In Love Me Tender, Clémence confides to her ex-husband that she has affairs with women. Shortly after, he files lawsuits to remove custody of their son. By adapting Constance Debré’s autofiction to cinema, director Anna Cazenave Cambet (De l’or pour les chiens) offers a representation simply unprecedented: that of a heroine who is at once a woman, a mother, and a lesbian, combining these identities without ever generating internal conflict. And then there is that final scene, which sticks with you long after the viewing.
- Nicolas’s Pick: La “Trilogie d’Oslo”, by Dag Johan Haugerud (Dreams, Love, Desire)
In this sensitive epic, the Norwegian filmmaker Dag Johan Haugerud probes with finesse the feeling of love, couples and fantasies with the intelligence of a gay man who casts a queer gaze on the emotional and sensual world of his peers. By blending hyperrealism and dreaminess, he offers a magnetic and brilliant trilogy. Special mention for Love, which shows how much heterosexuals have to learn from queer sexuality and relationship patterns.
- Nicolas’s Pick: Des preuves d’amour, by Alice Douard
Halfway between fiction and documentary, Alice Douard contemplates motherhood from a lesbian angle. With tenderness and humor, we meet Céline and Nadia, played by Ella Rumpf and Monia Chokri. Over the course of a pregnancy, they prepare to become parents—both intimately and in the eyes of others and of the law. Even if the reality of administrative battles and intrafamilial dramas throws up some obstacles, it is above all a funny lesbian romance that ends well!
Nicolas’s Pick: The Children Are Fine, by Nathan Ambrosioni
Three films in already, Nathan Ambrosioni, aged just 26, are delving into the theme of family with impressive accuracy and delicacy. With The Children Are Fine, the young French cinema prodigy brings together an irresistible cast (including Camille Cottin, on the cover of têtu·’s winter issue, in a new lesbian role) and tackles a rare theme: voluntary disappearances.
- Nicolas’s Pick: Queer, by Luca Guadagnino
Drew Starkey, Omar Apollo and Daniel Craig in the same film: thank you, Luca Guadagnino! Based on a text by William S. Burroughs, his film Queer is a wild love story and a celebration of self-rejection. And the costumes are signed by Jonathan W. Anderson, who even went to seek out 1950s underwear to stay faithful to the period.
