I Saw the TV Glow (2024): The fact that this movie has a 5.8 IMDb rating is absolutely disgusting to me. A wholly original, visually distinctive, emotionally resonant, genre-bending movie, it is one of the best film stories of the decade. Written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun, it is a testament of great vision and sensibility, which manages to make some hard-hitting observations about our present-day media culture and the representation of queerness. It’s one of those movies that can be about many things, that you take out of whatever you relate to, that can’t be pigeonholed and transcends restrictive narratives. In what is probably the most relevant coming-of-age movie of our times, you should put down anything else you’re doing and prioritize watching I Saw the TV Glow. 9
Paris is Burning (1990): It’s rather common these days to have raw documentaries that defy strict formats, but this wasn’t as common thirty plus years ago. Yet, it’s not only its unorthodox form that makes Paris is Burning a much acclaimed film. Exploring “the ball culture of New York City and the African-American, Latino, gay and transgender communities involved in it” (dixit Wikipedia), it is full of personality, verve and social insight. The 1980s were a particularly tough time for the lives of many of those who are featured in PiB, but to its merit, the movie doesn’t focus solely on this. Rather, it manages to paint a living, breathing picture of its protagonists, even if it doesn’t have very strongly defined leads to follow throughout. I’ll say this is still an engaging piece of filmmaking and storytelling, very much worth its time. And it sure did make me think of the equally fascinating Kokomo City (2023), which also definitely deserves another mention. 8
Fin de siglo (2019): It might not have the lushness of Call Me by Your Name (2017), but Fds is every much as tall standing a story about love, choices and the fleeting sense of time. Ocho (Juan Barberini) is coming off a long relationship, trying to get a feeling of the solitary life. He meets Javi (Ramon Pujol) and the attraction between them is apparently instantaneous. It soon turns out they have more in common than Ocho initially thought. The way in which Lucio Castro’s movie (very) slowly builds is a bit testing at times, but it then goes full-on interpretative on reality, with a set of rather spicy scenes along the way. It seems to me that Castro applied a stylistic and structural overlay to the story which amplified a certain deliberateness and inevitability in how we perceive the paths not taken. Also, the story being partly set at the end of the 90s also has that ephemeral quality all stories about our disconnection presently have. It’s really good. 8
We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (2021): Jane Schoenbrun’s first feature is, at the same time, simpler and more opaque. No Pink Opaque, though. A minimalistic movie about Casey (Anna Cobb), a teenager who takes on an online challenge under the guise of “the world’s fair”. She starts broadcasting parts of her life to document her changes as per the challenge’s expectations and draws the attention of JLB. This middle aged man claims to be worried about her, though there’s this underlying (and even overt) creepiness to him that finely underscores one of the problems with digital connections. Ultimately, Casey is a lonely girl, living with an unloving father, searching for attention and recognition, while trying to find out who she really is. Internet culture is just part of what we’re looking at. It’s a slow movie, that’s for sure, and is at most unsettling, but the style and thematic frequency are already there. 7
I’m Your Venus (2025): Even if the Netflix standard of filmmaking is questionable, it sometimes does point to real cinema. In this case, it led me to Paris is Burning. I’m Your Venus is about one of the people featured in the documentary, Venus Xtravaganza, who was murdered before the release of the film. It’s structured like a traditional documentary and follows the three brothers of Venus in their attempt to unearth something about the unsolved murder. At the same time, it is a kind of reconciliation trip, as the family had not been fully on board with the life choices Venus made and it took some serious introspection to come to terms with them. Throughout the movie, the remaining brothers get to know the community. Even as it tries to be wholesome, I don’t think the movie ever shakes veneer of performance that its very traditional documentary approach instils into it. I’m not here to judge anyone’s true intentions though, just to point out that I don’t think I’m Your Venus does enough to stand out as anything but a small advocacy story. 6
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