7 kinky LGBTQ films you must submit to, ranked

To celebrate the US release of kinktastic Pillion – and Alexander Skarsgård’s humongous prosthetic penis, and the issue of Attitude Uncut it inspired! – join us as Attitude takes a crawl down memory lane…

From Kristen Stewart’s love of ‘gains’ in Love Lies Bleeding to real sex in Shortbus, here, we look back on seven films the trade in queer kink. Expect sex-positivity in spades!

7 Stranger by the Lake (2014) – outdoors

There are erections and cumshots aplenty in this arty, sun-drenched homoerotic thriller, which perfectly captures the tension of outdoor cruising. One languid summer at a secluded lake in the French countryside, jaded Franck discovers the fleeting pleasures of anonymous sex — only to be ensnared by Michel, a forebodingly magnetic hunk whose good looks hide a murderous compulsion.

6 Pillion (2025) – sub/dom

The film that inspired this entire drop of kink-themed Attitude content, replete with leather, Lycra, wrestling and all-out worship. In a recent review for Attitude, film writer Guy Lodge said that for all the “sheer straight-up Tom of Finland hotness” of the film, “it delivers on that promise: not only does Skarsgård fill out those biker leathers very nicely indeed, but we get a tasty glimpse of the goods underneath, complete with Prince Albert piercing. (It’s a prosthetic, but who’s complaining?) Despite these sleazy trappings, the big surprise of this accomplished debut feature from British writer-director Harry Lighton is how, well, sweet it is. It may be a queer and sometimes raucously candid study of the power dynamics in a dom-sub relationship, but it gradually grows into a tender and hard-earned love story, as two partners negotiate a path to intimacy around their respective insecurities and psychological blockades.

5 Love Lies Bleeding (2024) – muscle worship

Albuquerque, New Mexico – a desert town blazing with neon vice is the setting of Saint Maud director Rose Glass’s outrageous sophomore effort. Set in trashtastic 1989, it’s part-body horror, part-crime caper: think Basic Instinct meets Priscilla Queen of the Desert… but through a lesbian lens. Here, where sweat and heat breeds rogues and dreamers, Kristen Stewart’s horny gym manager Lou falls into an all-consuming infatuation with the mysterious, steroid-loving bodybuilder Jackie, played by Katy O’Brian, who more than reminds us of the muscle Mary Adonis crowd.

4 Shortbus (2006) – voyeurism

The voyeurism in Shortbus is so literal that fiction essentially blends into fact: John Cameron Mitchell’s follow-up to the mighty Hedwig and the Angry Inch follows a group achingly cool, impossibly attractive, sexually fluid friends in New York City who hook up at will… and if they can’t be bothered, like to watch. Very 2025! And the sex is gloriously unsimulated. As we discovered in an Attitude cover interview with the team at the time, the sexual chemistry between the actors was in fact being scoped out during callbacks. Actor Paul Dawson told us of being paired up with singer-songwriter Jay Brannan: “We all were sat in the theatre and John showed excerpts from our audition tapes. We had our little score sheets and then after watching each tape we would rank from 1 to 4 how much we were attracted to the person. Then when he would pair up … and have us read together.” Sounds like the blueprint for modern dating apps!

3 The Duke of Burgundy (2014) – BDSM

“How do you punish someone who wants to be punished? By not punishing them? I think I just heard you say ‘whoa.’” These words, from the Guardian’s review of the erotic romance drama film in question, live-rent free in this cinephile’s head – so succinctly do they sum the central conundrum of this hidden gem from 2014. Starring Sidse Babett Knudsen as subby Cynthia and Chiara D’Anna as reluctant dom Evelyn, Peter Strickland’s immensely sensual vibe is a welcome contrast to the brutality of other films on this list, while quietly amusing the viewer with its depiction of how a lover’s kinks can test one’s patience. Getting in and out of corsets is time-consuming, people!

2 Bound (1996) – BDSM

Lodge said it best in his Attitude retrospective review of Bound earlier this year: “Way back in 1996, long before sibling directing duo the Wachowskis became sisters, they made the most flagrantly queer film of their career with this deliciously tongue-in-cheek but sincerely sexy erotic noir. Each in the best form of their careers, Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly star as underworld lovers — an ex-con and a restless gangster’s moll, respectively — plotting to flee the mob with a big wad of Mafia money to boot. It’s tightly plotted and dizzily hot, fully immersed in mid-90s style but fresh as a daisy today: anyone who saw and loved Love Lies Bleeding last year but hasn’t seen this, get on it.

1 The Handmaiden (2016) – bondage

With a lavishly indulgent runtime of two hours and 24 minutes, Park Chan-wook’s 2016 South Korean thriller The Handmaiden is suffused with an undeniable eroticism. Adapted from Sarah Waters’ hit novel Fingersmith (you might also recognise Waters’ name from Tipping the Velvet, one of the most famous sapphic novels of all time) and transporting the action from Victorian London to 1930s Korea, the film delves with unflinching fascination into the volatile dynamic between a wealthy glamazon and the titular handmaiden — initially hired as her caretaker — who becomes the object of her rapturous love and desire. For all its soft-focus shots of euphoric lovemaking in satin sheets, the film also focuses hard on kink, from bondage and restraint to voyeurism to spanking. 

Asked in a CNN interview what directors should avoid when it comes to sex on screen, Chan-wook said that “from the scriptwriting stage you ask for advice from many people around,” he explains through a translator. “And when I say ask those around you, I mean women.”

“Make sure scenes don’t come across as a male gaze and that they are not in any way objectifying women and sex,” he added.