Every May, Cannes becomes the center of the world—the film world, that is. The international film festival presents itself as the premiere place for the future of cinema. This year, though, the future did not arrive in the form of a new canonized masterpiece from the usual prestige suspects. It arrived in the queer films.
From sweeping historical epics to quiet countryside romances to satirical comedies, a record–breaking 22 films were in competition for the Queer Palm this year, an independent prize for selected queer films entered into the festival. And even that number almost undersells what was happening. Queer characters, queer themes, queer desire, queer grief, queer comedy, queer history—all of it seemed to be everywhere, scattered across Competition, Un Certain Regard, Critics’ Week, and the smaller sidebars. After 12 days and 38 movies, I didn’t even get close to watching every film that could vaguely be considered queer cinema.
In a year when much of the Competition lineup felt rather “mid,” queer cinema consistently provided the festival’s most exciting discoveries. My favorite films at Cannes were explicitly queer works: La Bola Negra, Club Kid, Coward, La Gradiva, Nagi Notes, and many more. Some of my least favorite films were also pretty queer—sorry Her Private Hell and Roma Elastica. Even films not formally positioned as queer cinema often engaged with queer themes. The eventual Palme d'Or winner Fjord, for instance, contains a queer subplot between two young characters that proves crucial to understanding the film’s broader concerns with identity, community, and emotional isolation.
The story of this year’s Cannes is not simply that there were more queer films than ever before. It is that queer cinema emerged as the festival’s most artistically vibrant, politically resonant, and emotionally engaging force at a moment when the rest of Cannes struggled to find its footing.
It’s difficult to say exactly why Cannes was so queer this year. Historically, queer art has flourished during moments of social backlash and political upheaval. As LGBTQ+ rights face renewed attacks across the globe—from anti–trans legislation to censorship efforts and broader cultural reactionism—many filmmakers seem to be responding by becoming more visible. The result was a festival filled with films that refused to apologize for their queerness or frame it as something that required any explanation.
That spirit was maybe best embodied by Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, which ultimately won the Queer Palm. The film understands queerness as a way of imagining alternative worlds. Throughout the festival, plenty of filmmakers repeatedly rejected the assumption that queer stories must justify their existence through tragedy or trauma. Instead, many films approached queerness as a natural part of life, desire, creativity, and community.
Queerness is also no longer confined to a niche category. Some of the festival’s most anticipated, acclaimed, and successful titles were queer works. The Man I Love became one of the most discussed films in Competition. Coward won an acting award with a first–time actor. Club Kid sparked a fierce bidding war. La Bola Negra became one of the most defining films of the festival. These films occupied the center of the conversation, helped more by the absence of major Hollywood studios.
The sprawl of queerness at this year’s Cannes also showed the diversity of approaches to representation. Not all queer films were interested in the same questions, nor should they have been.
Some films placed queerness at the center of the narrative. Coward, Lukas Dhont’s World War I romance, uses gay desire as the emotional engine of the entire story. The Man I Love directly engages with AIDS–era history and artistic identity. La Bola Negra traces queer stories across generations of Spanish history. In each case, queerness is the thing that drives the narrative forward.
At the same time, other films treated queer identities more as texture. Cannes still contained plenty of films that deployed a lesbian hookup as a marker of transgression or shock. Visibility alone isn’t meaningful, and a queer subplot doesn’t automatically transform a film’s boring politics into something worth consuming.
Yet, the strongest and most subversive films were not simply about queer identities. La Gradiva turns a teenager’s homoerotic longing into a dreamlike and philosophical narrative. Nagi Notes approaches the complications of identity and age with gentle intimacy. Jim Queen, probably one of the funniest films I saw at the festival, uses camp and absurdist humor to satirize everything from influencer culture to queer community dynamics. These films brought in new perspectives that approached queerness as a lens to understand the world.
One of Cannes’ greatest strengths remains its internationalism. Unlike Hollywood awards discourse, which often revolves around a relatively narrow set of American cultural perspectives, Cannes is a meeting point for filmmakers from around the world. Stories emerged from Spain, Belgium, France, Japan, Mexico, Haiti, Nepal, and beyond. Queerness was not confined to a singular identity at Cannes but a collection of experiences shaped by different histories, religions, cultures, and political contexts.
The lineup also extended beyond the traditional dominance of white gay male narratives. Lesbian stories, trans stories, and stories centered around people of color occupied a very visible place within the festival. Though the highest profile queer films remained disproportionately focused on gay men, many other films like Nepalese thriller Elephants in the Fog and the profound Haitian feature Marie Madeleine explored specific regional tales without flattening their characters into universalized narratives.
In a year where much of the Competition lineup was just okay, queer cinema repeatedly delivered the festival’s most memorable moments. From a father and son singing Ethel Cain to Penelope Cruz telling a crowd of soldiers: “Transvestism is the fantasy of possibility, war is the exact opposite,” queer films proved to be funnier, stranger, more emotionally vulnerable, and more formally ambitious than the rest of the competition.
At a festival where many of the usual players seemed content to just tread water, queer filmmakers pushed cinema forward. Audiences are responding to stories that are specific, international, politically engaged, and complex. We want films that take risks. We want films that imagine different ways of living and being. And if Cannes truly offers a glimpse into the future of film, then this year’s message was hard to miss—it’s going to be very, very queer.
