To celebrate the 40th birthday of BFI Flare, one of Europe's largest LGBTIQA+ film festivals, Rhianna Dhillon picks five of her favourites on Player.

Amidst the grief of losing her mother, sheltered teen Claudia discovers love for the first time in this beautiful and sublime debut.

Christopher Marlowe's 16th century play is radically adapted by Derek Jarman in one of his most powerful films, starring Tilda Swinton.

Akerman’s debut feature, with its 10-minute lesbian sex scene, revealed its maker to be a radical and uncompromising force in cinema.

A group of young men test each other’s boundaries in this provocative chamber piece from acclaimed queer filmmaker Marco Berger.

Programmers, filmmakers, and attendees past and present chart the history of BFI Flare to mark its 40th anniversary, from parties to politics.

Céline Sciamma’s BAFTA-nominated film about the tentative love between a painter and her subject in 18th-century France.

Fassbinder's visual and verbal extravaganza about a successful but lonely fashion designer who falls in love with a beautiful younger woman.

The Queen's Silver Jubilee beats to the sounds of Funkadelic, Sylvester and the O'Jays in Isaac Julien’s feature debut.

Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, Stoker) channels Sarah Waters’ novel Fingersmith, to create a sumptuous twisty psychological thriller full of erotic intrigue.

A young London-based writer begins a double life as a sex worker to research his debut novel, in this gripping psychological drama.

Sacha Polak and Vicky Knight reunite for this daring drama about love, family and forgiveness, loosely inspired by Knight’s life.

Bullied for her sexuality, Dublin schoolgirl Lily turns to her gay best friend for support in this vibrant coming-out, coming-of-age drama.

Gripping account of repressed sexual desire in a masculine environment, with British newcomer Harris Dickinson as a virulently macho Brooklyn teen.

Queer sisterhood and collective power lie at the heart of this arresting Brazilian debut, in which a promising volleyball player faces an unwanted pregnancy.

Hettie MacDonald’s 1996 comedy tells the story of two classmates and neighbours who fall in love over one summer in South East London.

Three young women explore love and sex in this spirited coming-of-age drama, which won the World Cinema Dramatic Audience Award at Sundance 2022.

Merchant Ivory’s landmark adaptation of E M Forster’s classic LGBTQ+ novel and a precursor to the James Ivory-scripted Call Me By Your Name.

The lives of a London gay rugby team, both on and off the pitch, are explored in this assured feature which reveals the many games that people play.

Hailed as ‘Poland’s first LGBT film’, Tomasz Wasilewski’s striking drama follows a champion swimmer whose gay relationship causes ripples.

A peek behind the scenes at the homoerotic photography zine Kink, which has cultivated an intimate style employing non-professional models.

Andrew Haigh's internationally acclaimed tale of a brief encounter between two gay men.

James Franco and Travis Mathews recreate explicit footage cut, rumoured to be lost, from one of the most notorious gay features ever made.

A lone scientist in Portugal’s Douro region embarks on an unexpected transcendental journey. Beautiful, erotic and baffling.

Amat Escalante follows Heli with a boundary-pushing, mind-blowing mix of sex, sci-fi and social drama.

Derek Jarman’s unique biopic of the 17th century Italian artist Michelangelo da Caravaggio is a powerful meditation on sexuality, criminality and art.

Derek Jacobi and Daniel Craig star as artist Francis Bacon and his muse George Dyer in John Maybury’s darkly exquisite biopic.

A teenage tearaway is forced to face up to his actions and confront his burgeoning sexuality, in this provocative Slovenian coming-of-age tale.

A schoolteacher juggles everyday life with nights spent cruising for Mr Right in this fascinating landmark in British gay cinema

Sexual obsessions spiral dangerously out of control in this altogether different coming-of-age tale.

Ron Peck’s experimental follow up to the groundbreaking Nighthawks is both a making-of documentary and a deeply personal film memoir.

A brief encounter at a naked sex club in Paris seems to be going well for Theo and Hugo, but a sudden realisation changes everything.

Peter Strickland’s visually and aurally intoxicating tale of sadomasochistic power-play is a daringly erotic sensory feast.

A British-Palestinian drag performer catches the eye of a strait-laced white man in Amrou Al-Kadhi’s stunning, semi-autobiographical debut.

The world’s troubles recede, at least for a moment, in this intimate drama about an affair between a Finnish man and a Syrian immigrant.

A lesbian couple arouse the interest of their new neighbour in this erotic tale of voyeurism, power dressing and fantasy.

A seductive and smart gay comedy set on a cruisy Greek island.

One dress changes everything for a family in Dionne Edwards’ brilliant debut. Defiant, uplifting and with music at its core.

Juliet Bashore’s queer docufiction, starring Tigr and real-life girlfriend Sharon Mitchell, celebrates the the San Francisco underground in the 1980s.

Reviled upon its release, now reclaimed as a cult classic - one can only submit to the trash-tastic delights of Paul Verhoeven's erotic disasterpiece.

A distinctly bold and sensual reclaiming of gay history, Jarman here tells the sexually intense story of the 4th-century martyr.

Jeanne Moreau plays a jaded brothel madam caught up in the violent sexual awakening of Brad Davis' naïve young sailor.

The Terence Davies Trilogy reaches its astonishing climax as tortured Liverpool clerk Robert Tucker prepares to meet his maker.

A young trans woman embarks on a journey with her estranged father to scatter her mother’s ashes in this tender depiction of identity and family ties.

Eric Cantona and Beatrice Dalle star in an outrageous erotic fever dream about a couple who invite four diverse guests to their midnight orgy.

Autobiography as art: the centrepiece of Terence Davies' devastating Liverpool-set Trilogy focuses on his fictional alter-ego in middle age.

The first part of Terence Davies' formidable Trilogy explores the effects of violence on a Liverpool schoolboy, told in a series of flashbacks.

Ron Peck tests the thin line between pornography and art with his amusing rumination on the difficulties of showing the naked male form.

Terence Davies’ devastatingly moving, lyrical portrait of the life of celebrated war poet Siegfried Sassoon.

Soulful docufiction featuring real-life porn actor Lalo Santos.