The 10 best queer films of 2024

Here & Queer is an interview series hosted by Peter Knegt that celebrates and amplifies the work of LGBTQ artists through unfiltered conversations. This is a special year end edition counting down the best queer films of 2024.

10. Will & Harper

Nothing warmed my cold, gay heart more this year than this incredibly hopeful documentary about the friendship between Will Ferrell and longtime Saturday Night Live writer Harper Steele. Not only is Will & Harper just a joy to watch, but it also provides a public service in showing cis people how to be great allies to their trans friends. And that's something cis people are definitely going to need to be doing in 2025.

9. Backspot

Finally! The gritty, gay cheerleading drama we've been waiting for. More Black Swan than Bring It On, D.W. Waterson's directorial debut stars the glory that is Devery Jacobs as a young woman who will do whatever it takes to make it in an elite cheer squad. A queer window into the physical and mental challenges of competitive cheerleading, the film also gets bonus points for giving us Evan Rachel Wood as the scariest lesbian cheerleading instructor in cinematic history.

8. In the Summers

You know, a lot of filmmakers dig into their own upbringings for their first feature, but few do so with as much poignancy as Alessandra Lacorazza in In the Summers. The film tells the story of two sisters navigating their relationship with their volatile but loving father, whom they only see in the summertime. And through a series of vignettes set across decades, Lacorazza thoughtfully expresses the quiet devastation of growing up around addiction.

7. My Old Ass

I'm sorry, but more movies need Aubrey Plaza appearing from the future to advise their mushroom-tripping protagonists. Watching this happen in My Old Ass is just the best, and so was the entire movie. It's both incredibly sweet and extremely Canadian — two things that don't often work for me when combined, but in this case, my old ass was just so charmed by it. We definitely have a queer coming-of-age classic on our hands. Thank you, Megan Park.

6. Love Lies Bleeding

I cannot overstate how much my love lies bleeding for Kristen Stewart, who is the unabashedly queer movie star the world needs right now. And her unparalleled appeal is on full display in this film, which is just a bloody, bulging vision from director Rose Glass. The film left me with even more of an appreciation for the fearless choices Stewart has been making in her post-Twilight career. Also Katy O'Brian is the real deal — watch out for her.

5. The People's Joker

What Vera Drew pulled off with this film truly is nothing short of remarkable. What started as a dare to essentially remix Todd Phillips's 2019 film, Joker, resulted in a profoundly inventive DIY parody of comic book movies and a deeply affecting trans coming-of-age narrative rolled into one. Writer, director and star Drew deserves the world for the hoops she had to jump through to get The People's Joker in cinemas this year. And thank God she did, because at least now there was one Joker movie in 2024 that was worth the price of admission!

4. Problemista

Those of us who have been fans of Julio Torres over the years know he's a comedic genius capable of anything. And were we ever proven right this year. With Problemista, Torres gave us one of the year's most emotionally intelligent films and also, unfortunately, one that very much speaks to this moment. Starring Torres himself as an aspiring toy designer whose only hope to avoid deportation from the U.S. is to work for an erratic art world outcast played exquisitely by Tilda Swinton, Problemista is low-key a monumental film. Considering Torres also gave us perhaps the greatest queer TV show of the year in Fantasmas, we can only bow down.

3. Queer

Speaking of brilliant and prolific queer men who do great work with Tilda Swinton, can we please give it up for Luca Guadagnino and the legendary year he has had? Not to spoil things, but Queer — his feverish adaptation of William S. Burroughs's novel of the same name — isn't even his highest-ranked film on this list. And that's despite Guadagnino going for broke with this radical, beautiful, totally mad spiral of a movie (which probably features Daniel Craig's best performance ever) about a doomed love between two men. And yet somehow it is no match for …

2. Challengers

I'm not sure I've ever walked out of a movie feeling quite as virile and alive as I did all three times I saw Challengers this past spring. This movie lets you feel simultaneously like a horny 20-something bisexual tennis player and a horny 50-year-old gay Italian filmmaker — all while injecting you with a score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, which needs to be sold in pill form. But seriously, everything in this movie is just such a serve: the score, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom's cinematography, Marco Costa's editing, Justin Kuritzkes's script, Zendaya's facial expressions, Josh O'Connor's thighs … And it all comes together so seamlessly under Guadagnino's direction. It also prompted me to spend the last six months telling everyone I know that I was going to start taking tennis lessons (even though I almost certainly never will).

1. I Saw the TV Glow

Jane Schoenbrun's I Saw the TV Glow is the one film this year that I would feel comfortable classifying as a masterpiece — and a very queer masterpiece at that. It was the single most visceral experience I had in a cinema this year, and although I felt as if it was speaking directly to my experiences, I know so many people who felt the same way. And that's because of how masterfully it digs into our psyches to capture the feelings of anxiety and isolation that too many of us know all too well. It is really an astonishing new entry into the canon of trans cinema and unquestionably my number 1 queer film of 2024. May we all see the TV glow!

And there you have it, the 10 best queer films of 2024. Please feel free to disagree with me all you want in the comments of the Instagram post.