How Films Like ‘All of Us Strangers,’ ‘Passages’ and ‘Bottoms’ Usher in a New Era for Queer Storytelling

A film director sleeping with a young woman behind his husband’s back. A group of horny teenage girls starting a fight club. A middle aged swimmer attempting to swim from Cuba to Florida. This year, queer stories seem to be breaking from common narrative tropes — coming out, persecution, HIV/AIDS — in a major way.

But are there actually more stories being told about queer people who aren’t suffering because of their sexuality? For Ira Sachs, who wrote and directed , the answer is not so clear. “This idea that queer films are now broadening out — that’s really not my experience of queer cinema,” says Sachs, emphasizing his own personal canon of favorites and movies that inspired : films by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Chantal Akerman, Frank Ripploh and Luchino Visconti.

He concedes, though, that perhaps his own catalog of beloved films hasn’t reached the general public in the same way, nor have bodies paid particularly close attention to them. “It’s not like those [queer films] have entered into the mainstream, but they’re very seminal to me. The distinction between what an individual experiences as the zeitgeist and what a culture experiences is interesting.” Emma Seligman, who directed the lesbian fight club comedy ,notes that many queer stories are rarely told by queer storytellers.

“I’ve never seen [many] queer movies be uplifted that much in awards season, particularly at the , that aren’t about pain, made by straight people about our trauma, punishing us, or wanting to pride themselves on going to the theater, taking pity on us,” she says. Sachs points to the prolific career of gay American auteur Gregg Araki — whose work may have been too daring, too independent for mainstream minded Academy voters.

“Araki is himself, and his films seem directly in conversation with his sexuality,” says Sachs. “I think that seems [to awards bodies] almost like he’s not performing enough. It’s too direct. There’s a lack of transformation — which, by the way, is the modus operandi of American cinema, as opposed to European cinema.” Sachs emphasizes it’s transformative performances that tend to draw the attention of the Academy.

“Transformation, in general, is something we pride actors on. It’s a really cool thing they can do,” agrees Seligman. “But maybe it’s just not sexy enough to see a queer person playing a queer character that’s not suffering.” Is that why, when queer stories do penetrate the Oscars arena, the awards often go to straight performers making a remarkable transformation into queerness? Some famous examples are Oscar winners like ’sJared Leto and ’s Hilary Swank, who played trans characters, or ’s Sean Penn and ’s Tom Hanks.

This awards season boasts plenty of queer themed films, with , and featuring brief storylines about same sex relationships. For the most part, however, openly gay actors are relegated to supporting roles, making room for straight actors to take the queer lead. Jodie Foster plays a queer woman in , the coach and best friend to Annette Bening’s eponymous lesbian swimmer.

Matt Bomer and Gideon Glick are gay men playing gay men in , supporting leading man Bradley Cooper as the bisexual Leonard Bernstein. (There are exceptions: Colman Domingo in and Andrew Scott in .) By now, the consensus is that it’s not politically correct for cisgender actors to play transgender characters.

But the rules regarding a character’s sexuality remain much fuzzier. “I still believe it’s wrong, and arguably illegal, to ask someone what their sexuality is when you’re hiring them — and that includes actors when you’re casting,” says Seligman. “I do think it’s completely wrong for a cis person to be playing a trans person, full stop.

But when it comes to queer characters, and not casting queer actors who are openly out, there’s more of a dance. I would like to set a little bit of an affirmative action within myself. It doesn’t hurt to amplify voices that are already out. I have to remind myself that it’s very dangerous, and it’s a very bold thing, to actually be out in our industry.” Both Sachs and Seligman emphasize that only a few people in the industry are willing to take the risks that have gotten their respective films made, not an overall shift in the way financiers think.

“A film like [ ] only appears in the public because one or two people decide that they’re going to open the gates. In some ways, it’s not a changing nature. It’s a few people [who] made a big difference,” says Sachs. Adds Seligman: “It’s really powerful to be naive because I was just like, ‘Someone’s going to make it,’ and then Alana [Mayo, president of Orion Pictures] did, but no one else wanted to.

I think the fact that it was queer, and also bloody and weird and all these other things, didn’t compute to people.” So have things really shifted for queer filmmakers? Sachs isn’t sure one way or the other: “The idea of a queer [film]maker having a sustained career in which queer content is central or defining, [you] would be very hard pressed to find that person in world cinema.” But perhaps filmmakers like Seligman could be the ones to pick up that mantle.

“I feel really grateful with the success of , but in my mind, I was like, ‘There’s a queer audience that’s rabid for this,’ ” she says. “People want gay shit.” . THR Newsletters Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day More from The Hollywood Reporter.