In celebration of Pride Month, MUBI will bring a fresh batch of new exclusives to Pride Unprejudiced, the platform’s ongoing film collection dedicated to 2SLGBTQ+ Cinema.
The series, available year-round, includes an established curation of groundbreaking films which explore the vast spectrum of sexual orientations, gender identities and cultural perspectives.
Below I share a few of the films part of MUBI’s Pride Unprejudiced series.
Current highlights in the collection include:
BAD EDUCATION / LA MALA EDUCACIÓN (dir. Pedro Almodóvar, 2004)
Almodóvar’s hybrid of film noir and melodrama, stars Gael García Bernal, Fele Martínez, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Lluís Homar and Francisco Boira, the film focuses on two reunited childhood friends and lovers caught up in a stylised murder mystery.
I own this film on DVD and it is one I revisit because there is always something new to appreciate… be it in the story, the cinematography, the performances, all of it.
THE HANDMAIDEN (dir. Park Chan-Wook, 2016)
The director’s clear flair for stylish visuals and jaw-dropping plot twists shines through in this beautiful subversive erotic thriller, set during the Japanese occupation of Korea. As seductive as it is bone-chilling, this film is full of cinematic pleasures.
Friends and I attended the film’s premiere at TIFF and loved the film almost instantly. We still talk about this film today. A testament to the Park Chan-Wook’s skills as director but the manner in which he brings out so much from the actors and from the script. Another beautiful and cinematic film.
MAURICE (dir. James Ivory, 1987)
After his lover rejects him, a young man trapped by the oppressiveness of Edwardian society tries to come to terms with and accept his sexuality. The film stars a young Hugh Grant in a passionate, heartbreaking performance in a period drama from Merchant Ivory Productions.
I few years ago, I saw this film on a big screen with the filmmaker in attendance as I had not seen it before. It is quite a moving film and I left impressed by Grant’s performance.
These films join MUBI’s Pride Unprejudiced film collection this month:
BPM (Beats Per Minute) (dir. Robin Campillo, 2017)
Available to stream on MUBI now
This multi award-winning, festival darling takes place during the early 1990s when AIDS claimed countless lives. BPM is a moving docudrama follows Act Up-Paris activists fighting general indifference and Nathan, a newcomer to the group, who has his world shaken up by Sean, a radical militant
PLAYBACK (dir. Agustina Comedi, 2019)
Available to stream on MUBI now
Using opulent VHS archive footage and reenacted scenes, this hybrid documentary explores the experience of a group of drag queens amid Argentina’s military dictatorship and the AIDS epidemic. The film premiered at the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) and won the Teddy Award for Best Short at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2020.
ARIBADA (dirs. Natalia Escobar, Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau, 2022)
Streaming exclusively on MUBI June 21
This visually enticing and symbolic, documentary short follows a group of Colombian indigenous transwomen from the Emberá tribes. Aribada is a visually enticing and symbolic short, with a patchwork approach that blends the magical, the spiritual and the local rituals of the Emberá.
GIRLFRIENDS AND GIRLFRIENDS (dir. Zaida Carmona, 2022)
Streaming exclusively on MUBI June 28
Winner of the 2023 Bright Future award at International Film Festival Rotterdam, Girlfriends and Girlfriends is a sexy lo-fi rom-com following lesbians in their thirties living as they were in their twenties. They are in love with love but, in their search, they destroy each other, wandering from ex-girlfriend to ex-girlfriend in the bathrooms, beds and streets of Barcelona.
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