Growing up gay in India, I was lucky to find even a fleeting reference to queerness in the movies I watched. My well-worn VHS of My Beautiful Laundrette can definitely vouch for that.
Thankfully, today we have an abundance of options available for those looking to find queer South Asian films and fewer barriers to access them than ever before. Gone are my days of hunting for subtle queer coding. No more suffering through poorly written side characters who are often treated as either villains or punchlines, and whose queerness is reduced to a few vague allusions. In fact, as of this writing, anyone with a public library card can watch My Beautiful Laundrette on Kanopy.
For AAPI Heritage Month, I’ve compiled a short list of some of the best South Asian features available to stream, covering a diverse range of stories. I’m happy to say this list is far from complete as more and more LGBTQ+ South Asian films are being made than ever before. Political shifts in the region over the last few years are rapidly changing the way in which media represents marginalized queer communities, especially in India, where the bulk of the films below were produced.
That said, Bollywood (and indeed Hollywood) still has a long way to go. LGBTQ+ roles are rarely given to LGBTQ+ actors. Plotlines tend to revolve around a shocking “reveal” of a character’s hidden sexuality. The rift between a queer individual and their traditional family remains a recurring and repetitive trope. But there is indeed a shift happening that allows us a new wealth of LGBTQ+ Desi stories, and the young filmgoer in me couldn’t be happier!
Below, you’ll find seven of my favorites, all of which have English subtitles available on streaming.
Many of us have a sad childhood memory of the moment when our minds shifted from thinking we were “normal” or “natural” to realizing that the world saw us as “wrong.”
This is the moment in which we first meet Funny Boy’s Arjie (played by both Arush Nand and Brandon Ingram), a young boy living in Sri Lanka in the early 1980s. Arjie’s affluent Tamil family is grappling with an array of intersecting social forces: His aunt Radha (Agam Darshi) falls in love with a Sinhalese neighbor. A friend’s son, who may have ties to the militant Tamil Tigers, comes to live with them. All this bubbling political tension forces a reckoning with their chosen home.
Through it all, the family’s main concern is Arjie, their “funny boy” with a penchant for dressing like a girl and hating sports. When Arjie develops a close relationship with a male schoolmate who has a bad reputation, he must balance the thrill of this new romance with the fear of his parents’ wrath should the relationship be discovered.
Based on queer author Shyam Selvadurai’s wonderful 2015 novel (a favorite of mine) and directed by Deepa Mehta (whose 1996 film Fire was a pioneering moment of lesbian representation in Indian cinema), Funny Boy is a beautiful chaotic journey of sexuality, ethnicity, and class set against the tranquil shores of Colombo.
Speaking of Fire, which is regrettably unavailable to stream at the moment, another hallmark in lesbian South Asian representation is Ligy J. Pullappally’s 2004 romantic drama The Journey (a.k.a. Sancharram). Kiran (Suhasini V. Nair) and Delilah (Shruty Menon) are Hindu and Catholic students, respectively, living in the Indian state of Kerala. Their friendship blossoms to a beautiful relationship filmed with a gentle grace that makes you wish for more time to bask in their love.
The discovery of the couple’s relationship could lead to disaster: Should they flee or stay behind to suffer the fate their families choose for them? This wondrous romance will have you hoping for the best right to the very end.
In this 2022 Hindi dramedy, Suman (Bhumi Pednekar), a physical education teacher, gets catfished on a lesbian dating app and reports it to the police. The officer, Shardul (Rajkummar Rao), confides in her that he, too, is gay. Additionally, both leads are facing pressure at home to get married and live a heteronormative life. They strike up a scheme to marry each other and throw off the heat, freeing them both to pursue whoever they choose without upsetting their partner.
With all the makings of a screwball film, Baadhai Do nonetheless examines several topics in beautiful depth, including misogyny, body image issues, and the struggles of same-sex parenting. Ultimately, it’s the films positive portrayal of a lesbian romance that makes it a delight to watch.
In part because it stars father/daughter Bollywood heavy hitters Anil and Sonam Kapoor, Ek Ladkhi made a big splash when it premiered in 2019. This film takes the typical “boy meets girl” story and turns it on its ear.
The boy in question (Rajkummar Rao again!) is indeed in love with the girl (Sonam Kapoor), but she doesn’t love him, or indeed any man. This revelation shakes up the girl’s comfortable world and her relationships, especially with her father (Kapoor the elder) from whom she had been hiding her true self. Perhaps those well versed in queer cinema will find the plot somewhat simplistic, but the movie is a welcome step forward in showing Desi lesbian love on screen with care and elegance.
Fun fact: The title song is taken from a hit 1994 movie 1942: A Love Story, which starred a young Anil Kapoor! It has since become a staple of Hindi music (I remember radio stations playing it every hour), and I dare you not to let it become your next earworm.
Again, boy meets girl. This time, the boy is a body builder, Manu (Ayushmann Khurrana). The girl is beautiful Zumba instructor, Maanvi (Vaani Kapoor).
The plot of this film is a bit boilerplate, but the topic is long overdue for a South Asian film: Manu finds out Maanvi is a trans woman, has an internal crisis, but ultimately comes to terms with his feelings for her. Some splashy dance numbers, steamy love scenes, and moments of ridiculous humor add fun to the proceedings.
There are, however, some warnings that I should issue in advance: Most importantly, the actress Vaani Kapoor is a cis woman, which resulted in justifiable backlash upon the film’s 2021 release. There are also several ugly slurs and insults hurled Maanvi’s way, as well as several crude jokes at her expense made by people in Manu’s life.
As a balance, young director Abishek Kapoor peppers the film with scenes of Manu educating himself by watching real videos of trans people. In this way, any viewers who were lured in by a supposedly “traditional” Bollywood rom-com came away with a better understanding of the trans experience in India, all while rooting for love to conquer all.
In this 2022 literary adaptation, a close-knit Marathi family living in Kerala take in a paying house guest. This unnamed drifter (Prateik Babbar) is a young man, handsome and mysterious. The family’s son Tanay (Neelay Mehendale), an aspiring writer, grows infatuated with the tenant and develops a close connection with him. Little does Tanay know that his sister, Anuja (Anjali Silvaraman), a tomboy with no seeming desire for marriage, has also become entangled with the stranger.
At times slow and melodramatic, other times frenzied and sprinkled with magic realism, Cobalt Blue marks a shift in queer Indian cinema. The scenes between the two male characters do not shy away from showing intense erotic heat. The refusal to firmly define the love interest as solely straight or gay is a refreshing take from director Sachin Kundalkar, who also wrote the novel upon which the film was based.
Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan is set in 2018, around the time Indian’s Supreme Court ruled that a section of the British penal code criminalizing homosexuality was unconstitutional. Against the backdrop of that changing social world, the film follows two lovers, quiet Aman (Jitendra Kumar) and gregarious Kartik (Ayushmann Khurrana back at it!). Aman’s family grapples with the relationship and with the societal shifts around them.
Told at a fairly breakneck pace with a banger-filled soundtrack, the film shines with witty dialogue and a superb supporting cast. A huge hit in India upon its pre-COVID release in 2020, this is the kind of heartfelt gay comedy many of us wish we could have taken our parents to go see.
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