Some of the best ways to learn more are as close as your TV, tablet, or computer! The list can’t possibly include all of the great movies out there, so we’ve picked a few that represent a good place for super allies to begin.

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Faith and Religion:

Love Free or Die
Love Free or Die is a film about the first openly gay Episcopal Bishop, Gene Robinson. Since his ordination he has received death threats nearly every day. He dedicates his time to visiting churches throughout the world and encourages church leadership, clergy, and individuals to stand up for equality.

Coming Out:

Dangerous Living: Coming Out in the Developing World
Dangerous Living is a documentary that sheds light on the lives of LGBTQ+ people in non-western cultures where they are oppressed, marginalized, and often fear for their lives. Watch the stories of gays and lesbians in Egypt, Honduras, Kenya, and Thailand as they share their heartbreaks and triumphs.

When I Knew: A Different Beginning
Based on a book by the same name, When I Knew is a documentary that features LGBTQ+ people telling tales of when they first knew that they were “different”. Each interviewee candidly identifies an exact moment in their lives and the way that it changed who they would become.

Transgender Community:

Southern Comfort
Southern Comfort is a documentary detailing the last year of the life of Robert Eads, a transgender man living with cervical cancer in the deep-south. Watch as Robert has difficulty finding a doctor who is willing to treat him and as he turns to his network of support from other transpeople in the region.

Politics / Social Issues:

Fall from Grace
Fall from Grace is a documentary that explores the world of the Westboro Baptist Church and the Phelps family of Topeka, Kansas. Known primarily for their hateful signs and picketing at military funerals the group causes controversy wherever they go.

The Education of Shelby Knox
The Education of Shelby Knox is a documentary that follows a young woman from Lubbock, TX as she advocates for comprehensive and inclusive sex education in her conservative school district. She shares her experience as she reconciles her faith and her beliefs about sex, politics, and the culture wars.

FagBug
FagBug is a documentary that follows a woman on her 58-day trip through North America investigating the impact of hate crimes on communities in the US and Canada. Her motivation? Graffiti she found on her car on the 11^th annual Day of Silence that said “u r gay” and “fag.”

Freeheld
Freeheld is based on a documentary that shows the impact of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in a powerful and moving way. The film follows Laurel Hester in the final months of her life and her fight to ensure that her domestic partner receives the benefits that any wife of a public servant would be entitled.

LGBTQ+ History & Culture:

Tongues Untied
Originally aired on PBS in 1991, Tongues Untied is a documentary that details the various ways that homophobia and racism often intersect. Revolutionary for its time this film combines poetry, dance, and art to provide a glimpse of gay black culture in the United States during the 1980s.

Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria
An Emmy Award-winning documentary, Screaming Queens details what could easily have been the birth of the modern gay rights movement. In 1966, a small but violent protest led by gay activists in San Francisco did not receive the national attention of Stonewall, but represents a very significant milestone.

Paris Is Burning
Filmed in the late 1980s, Paris is Burning documents the lives of young, gay, black, men living in New York City. It provides an intimate look at the culture of vogue, drag-balls, and makeshift fashion shows staged by feuding “houses” through interviews and video footage.

HIV/AIDS

We Were Here
A critically-acclaimed documentary, We Were Here details the devastation of the early AIDS crisis in San Francisco and the strength and passion that emerged. Touching personal stories from those who lived them highlight the confusion, horrors, and rage of a time when little was known about this disease.

Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt
Common Threads is a documentary film about the AIDS Memorial Quilt and concludes with the first display of the Quilt on the National Mall. It focuses on the lives of people represented by just a few of the panels and highlights the horrifying statistics of diagnosis and death at the start of the epidemic.

Just Because We Love Them:

Gods and Monsters
Gods and Monsters is a fictionalized and speculative film about the final months of the life of James Whale, the director of Frankenstein and many other films in the 1930s and 1940s. He was openly gay during a time when sexual orientation wasn’t discussed, not even in Hollywood.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Hedwig and the Angry Inch is an adaptation of John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask’s rock-opera by the same name. It tells the story of a young East German who fronts a glam-rock band, falls in love with an American soldier, and has gender-changing surgery to marry and escape communist rule.