The best lesbian movies of all time include Carol (2015), Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), Desert Hearts (1985), The Watermelon Woman (1996), Bound (1996), But I’m a Cheerleader (1999), Mulholland Drive (2001), Saving Face (2004), Pariah (2011), The Handmaiden (2016) and Rafiki (2018). For pure fun, start with D.E.B.S. or Bottoms.
This list centers women who love women, including bi and queer women, and runs by era from 1931 to 2024. It includes romances, comedies and films where queer desire is part of a larger story. Years refer to the film’s first release or festival premiere; later theatrical dates can differ. For gay men’s stories, see the best gay movies of all time.
Best Lesbian Movies List at a Glance: Year and Director
| Film | Year | Director |
|---|---|---|
| Mädchen in Uniform | 1931 | Leontine Sagan |
| The Killing of Sister George | 1968 | Robert Aldrich |
| Desert Hearts | 1985 | Donna Deitch |
| The Color Purple | 1985 | Steven Spielberg |
| Fried Green Tomatoes | 1991 | Jon Avnet |
| Go Fish | 1994 | Rose Troche |
| Bound | 1996 | Lana and Lilly Wachowski |
| The Watermelon Woman | 1996 | Cheryl Dunye |
| Fire | 1996 | Deepa Mehta |
| But I’m a Cheerleader | 1999 | Jamie Babbit |
| Mulholland Drive | 2001 | David Lynch |
| Saving Face | 2004 | Alice Wu |
| D.E.B.S. | 2004 | Angela Robinson |
| The Kids Are All Right | 2010 | Lisa Cholodenko |
| Pariah | 2011 | Dee Rees |
| Mosquita y Mari | 2012 | Aurora Guerrero |
| Carol | 2015 | Todd Haynes |
| The Handmaiden | 2016 | Park Chan-wook |
| Signature Move | 2017 | Jennifer Reeder |
| Disobedience | 2017 | Sebastián Lelio |
| Rafiki | 2018 | Wanuri Kahiu |
| Portrait of a Lady on Fire | 2019 | Céline Sciamma |
| Happiest Season | 2020 | Clea DuVall |
| The Half of It | 2020 | Alice Wu |
| Everything Everywhere All at Once | 2022 | Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert |
| Bottoms | 2023 | Emma Seligman |
| Love Lies Bleeding | 2024 | Rose Glass |
Classic Lesbian Films From Weimar Germany to 1985
‘Mädchen in Uniform’ (1931)
Director: Leontine Sagan | Stars: Hertha Thiele, Dorothea Wieck
At a strict Prussian boarding school, a new student named Manuela becomes openly devoted to her kind teacher. Leontine Sagan’s landmark of early lesbian cinema is as concerned with the school’s punishing discipline as with Manuela’s feelings. Content note: an unequal student-teacher attachment and suicidal distress.
‘The Killing of Sister George’ (1968)
Director: Robert Aldrich | Stars: Beryl Reid, Susannah York, Coral Browne
June, a boozy soap actress, is about to be written out of her TV show, and things with her younger partner, Childie, are fraying. The BFI says one scene got the film an X rating, it flopped at the box office, and some scenes were shot at the Gateways Club, a real London lesbian bar. Content note: an emotionally abusive relationship.
‘Desert Hearts’ (1985)
Director: Donna Deitch | Stars: Helen Shaver, Patricia Charbonneau
In 1959, a professor goes to Reno to wait out her divorce and falls for Cay, who works at a casino. Donna Deitch made the film independently, adapting Jane Rule’s novel Desert of the Heart. The two women get desire, conflict and a hopeful possibility of a future. That still feels good to watch.
‘The Color Purple’ (1985)
Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Whoopi Goldberg, Margaret Avery
Celie survives decades of abuse in the rural South, and blues singer Shug Avery is the first person to show her tenderness. Spielberg adapted Alice Walker’s novel. Content note: sexual abuse and domestic violence.
’90s Lesbian Cinema That Defined Queer Indie Film
‘Fried Green Tomatoes’ (1991)
Director: Jon Avnet | Stars: Mary Stuart Masterson, Mary-Louise Parker
Idgie and Ruth run a café together in Depression-era Alabama. The film keeps their love coded, never explicit. Content note: domestic violence.
‘Go Fish’ (1994)
Director: Rose Troche | Stars: Guinevere Turner, V.S. Brodie
Lesbian friends in Chicago gossip and try to set up Max, who hasn’t dated in ages. Troche shot it in black and white on a tiny budget.
‘Bound’ (1996)
Director: Lana and Lilly Wachowski | Stars: Jennifer Tilly, Gina Gershon, Joe Pantoliano
Corky, an ex-con fixing up an apartment, meets Violet, the mobster’s girlfriend next door, and the two plot to steal millions in mob money. The BFI notes writer Susie Bright’s work as a consultant on the film. It was the Wachowskis’ feature debut, three years before The Matrix. Content note: graphic violence.
‘The Watermelon Woman’ (1996)
Director: Cheryl Dunye | Stars: Cheryl Dunye, Guinevere Turner
Cheryl, a young Black lesbian filmmaker in Philadelphia, becomes obsessed with a 1930s Black actress credited only as “the Watermelon Woman” and sets out to find her story. The fictional actress and the invented Fae Richards archive let Dunye explore what happens when queer Black women are missing from the historical record. It is a witty fiction film, not a documentary about a real forgotten star.
‘Fire’ (1996)
Director: Deepa Mehta | Stars: Shabana Azmi, Nandita Das
Two sisters-in-law in a middle-class Delhi home, both in loveless marriages, fall for each other. Content note: domestic abuse.
‘But I’m a Cheerleader’ (1999)
Director: Jamie Babbit | Stars: Natasha Lyonne, Clea DuVall, RuPaul
Megan, a high school cheerleader whose family suspects she’s a lesbian, is shipped off to a candy-colored conversion camp. Jamie Babbit’s satire turns the camp’s rigid ideas about gender into a joke, while treating Megan’s growing feelings for another girl seriously. Content note: conversion therapy.
Sapphic Cult Favorites of the 2000s
‘Mulholland Drive’ (2001)
Director: David Lynch | Stars: Naomi Watts, Laura Harring
An aspiring actress arrives in Los Angeles and finds a glamorous woman with amnesia hiding in her aunt’s apartment. They try to work out who she is and end up in bed.
‘Saving Face’ (2004)
Director: Alice Wu | Stars: Michelle Krusiec, Joan Chen
Wil, a Chinese American surgeon in New York, is secretly dating a dancer when her widowed mother shows up pregnant and moves in. Alice Wu’s romantic comedy gives mother and daughter their own secrets, expectations and chances at happiness.
‘D.E.B.S.’ (2004)
Director: Angela Robinson | Stars: Sara Foster, Jordana Brewster, Meagan Good, Devon Aoki
Amy, the top student at a secret spy academy, falls for Lucy Diamond, the supervillain she’s supposed to catch.
Lesbian Romance Movies and Dramas of the 2010s
‘The Kids Are All Right’ (2010)
Director: Lisa Cholodenko | Stars: Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo
Nic and Jules are a longtime couple whose teenage kids track down their sperm donor, a laid-back restaurateur who upends everyone’s routines. It got four Oscar nominations, best picture among them. Content note: one mom sleeps with the donor.
‘Pariah’ (2011)
Director: Dee Rees | Executive producer: Spike Lee
Alike, 17, is figuring out her identity as a Black lesbian in Brooklyn while her religious mother pushes back. Adepero Oduye leads Dee Rees’ intimate coming-of-age drama, which premiered at Sundance in 2011. Content note: homophobia and violence at home.
‘Mosquita y Mari’ (2012)
Director: Aurora Guerrero
Yolanda is a straight-A student. Mari is the rebellious new girl down the block in their Mexican American neighborhood of Los Angeles, and their friendship slowly turns into more.
‘Carol’ (2015)
Director: Todd Haynes | Stars: Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Sarah Paulson, Kyle Chandler
It’s Christmas 1952 in New York. Therese, a young shop clerk, helps an older woman pick a gift, and a pair of forgotten gloves brings them back together. It’s based on Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Price of Salt. (It’s also on our gay Christmas movies list.)
‘The Handmaiden’ (2016)
Director: Park Chan-wook | Stars: Kim Min-hee, Kim Tae-ri, Ha Jung-woo
In 1930s Korea under Japanese rule, a con man hires a pickpocket to work as maid to a reclusive heiress, so he can marry the heiress and steal her fortune. The two women fall for each other instead. Content note: explicit sex and violence.
‘Signature Move’ (2017)
Director: Jennifer Reeder | Stars: Fawzia Mirza, Sari Sanchez
Zaynab, a Pakistani American lawyer in Chicago, is hiding her love life from her mother while getting into lucha-style wrestling. Then she meets Alma. Mirza co-wrote the script.
‘Disobedience’ (2017)
Director: Sebastián Lelio | Stars: Rachel Weisz, Rachel McAdams, Alessandro Nivola
Ronit goes home to London’s Orthodox Jewish community for her father’s funeral. Her old love, Esti, is now married to their childhood friend.
‘Rafiki’ (2018)
Director: Wanuri Kahiu | Stars: Samantha Mugatsia, Sheila Munyiva
In Nairobi, Kena and Ziki fall for each other even though their fathers are rival political candidates. Cannes identifies it as Kenya’s first film in the Official Selection. In her festival interview, director Wanuri Kahiu described the trust needed to make the film and the ban it faced in Kenya at the time. Content note: homophobic violence.
‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ (2019)
Director: Céline Sciamma | Stars: Noémie Merlant, Adèle Haenel
Marianne, a painter in 18th-century France, is hired to paint Héloïse in secret, because Héloïse refuses to sit for the portrait meant to seal her marriage. The looking goes both ways. Sciamma won the 2019 Cannes screenplay prize for this slow, precise love story.
New WLW Movies From the 2020s
‘Happiest Season’ (2020)
Director: Clea DuVall | Stars: Kristen Stewart, Mackenzie Davis, Aubrey Plaza, Dan Levy
Abby plans to propose to Harper at Christmas with Harper’s family. On the drive there, Harper admits she isn’t out to her parents.
‘The Half of It’ (2020)
Director: Alice Wu | Stars: Leah Lewis
Ellie Chu, a Chinese American teen in a tiny town, writes other students’ essays for cash. A jock pays her to write love letters to a classmate, and Ellie falls for the girl too.
‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ (2022)
Director: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert | Stars: Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu
Evelyn, a laundromat owner buried in a tax audit, gets pulled into a multiverse battle. It keeps coming back to her daughter, Joy, who’s queer and has a girlfriend Evelyn won’t fully accept.
‘Bottoms’ (2023)
Director: Emma Seligman | Stars: Rachel Sennott, Ayo Edebiri
PJ and Josie, two unpopular queer high school seniors, start a “self-defense club” to get close to the girls they have crushes on. Content note: lots of (cartoonish) violence.
‘Love Lies Bleeding’ (2024)
Director: Rose Glass | Stars: Kristen Stewart, Katy O’Brian
Lou, a lonely gym manager, falls hard for Jackie, a bodybuilder passing through on her way to a competition in Las Vegas. Then Lou’s criminal family gets involved. Rose Glass’ thriller lets the romance get as unruly as the crime plot. Content note: graphic violence, domestic abuse and steroid use.
For a measure of critical recognition, Portrait of a Lady on Fire placed 30th in Sight and Sound’s 2022 critics’ poll. A poll can point you toward a film; it does not have to decide your favorite.
How to Pick Your Next Lesbian Movie Night
Start with Carol for a slow-burn romance, Saving Face for a family comedy or Bound for a thriller. For film history, pair Mädchen in Uniform with The Watermelon Woman. For a deliberately ridiculous night, choose D.E.B.S. or Bottoms. Check current availability in your country, since streaming catalogs change. Gayety’s movie section has more reviews.
Lesbian Movies FAQ: Firsts, Happy Endings and Labels
What is the best lesbian movie of all time?
There is no single answer. Carol and Portrait of a Lady on Fire are strong starting points for period romance, while Bound and Saving Face offer very different pleasures. Portrait placed 30th in Sight and Sound’s 2022 critics’ poll.
What was the first lesbian movie?
Mädchen in Uniform (1931) is a landmark of early lesbian cinema. Calling any one film the first depends on whether you mean a feature, a short, an explicit relationship or queer subtext. Barbara Hammer’s Dyketactics (1974) is another key work in lesbian filmmaking history.
Are there lesbian movies with happy endings?
Yes. Try Desert Hearts, But I’m a Cheerleader, Saving Face, D.E.B.S. or Happiest Season. They take different routes through conflict, but leave room for the central couples to be together.
What are good lesbian coming-of-age movies?
Pariah, Mosquita y Mari, The Half of It and But I’m a Cheerleader are strong picks. Pariah is a serious drama; Cheerleader takes a satirical approach.
What is the difference between lesbian, sapphic and WLW movies?
Lesbian movies generally center lesbian characters or relationships. Sapphic and WLW, short for women who love women, are broader terms that can include bi, pan and queer women, as well as nonbinary people who identify with those labels.