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As my first Sundance Film Festival comes to a close amid a precarious time for my community and many others, I look back on this year’s cinematic lineup with some optimism for LGBTQ representation when it’s needed most. From dark comedies about human connection to heartfelt family dramas about the shared queer experience and documentaries about the detriments of censorship and anti-trans legislation, filmmakers are holding space for progress, despite growing government-facilitated rollbacks on transgender and LGBTQ rights.
While discussing her new Mark Anthony Green-helmed A24 horror Opus at Deadline’s Sundance Studio, Ayo Edebiri admitted it “feels maybe slightly psychotic at times” to look at the news in what happened to be the first days of 2025 amid President Donald Trump’s second term in office.
“But my hope is that for me and that for other artists, that we continue to just champion each other’s work. It’s massively important,” said Edebiri. “There are so many queer storytellers who have changed the medium and changed lives, outside of storytellers who are in the western canon.”
Looking back on films that “have moved me throughout my life,” the Golden Globe- and Emmy-winning actress noted that the most impactful titles were about “characters who don’t look like me or characters who don’t have my worldview.”
“The humanity is what moves me,” Edebiri explained. “And there’s people that I love and I work with, and we have different politics, but it’s humanity and care for each other, I think that has to be the heart of it.”
Her Opus co-star Murray Bartlett echoed the need for “universal stories” after multiple people during the festival had stressed that specificity is the key to universality.
“I think the arts have always been a place where change can happen when change is being kind of squashed in other areas,” added Bartlett. “And I think it can be really powerful in a way, telling stories that aren’t necessarily exactly about what’s going on, but kind of paralleling what’s going on. It’s such a great thing.”
In Opus, Green’s feature debut, Edebiri plays a young writer who is invited to the remote compound of a legendary pop star (John Malkovich) after he mysteriously disappeared 30 years ago, receiving an intimate front-row seat to his twisted plan as it unfolds.
Although the film speaks more on a dark, satirical level to Green’s experience as a GQ columnist and arbiter of taste, there’s still plenty to be said about the pervasively toxic stan culture and cult mentality that has permeated through the entertainment industry and political circles.
Given enough followers or voters, “anyone could be a god at any moment,” the movie soberly reminds its audience of the post-January 6 digital age in which we live.
Other pieces of representation at Sundance were far more hopeful. And some were even full-circle, like co-writer and director Andrew Ahn‘s remake of the 1993 Asian-led gay romantic-comedy The Wedding Banquet, which holds a particularly nostalgic piece of significance for the filmmaker.
“For me, there’s definitely a kind of conservative backlash to the progress that’s been made over the past decades, and I see that within my community, within my own city, within my own family,” he mused. “And it really breaks my heart that the rights of queer people, trans people are being taken away, that our stories are being pushed again out to the margins.
“And so, for me, it’s so, It’s so meaningful to put this movie out there and to have it in theaters for people to see it. The original Wedding Banquet was the first film that I saw that had a gay character, and I think that in many ways, it gave me the strength to be who I am, to tell the types of stories that I tell as a filmmaker.”
While his and co-writer James Schamus’ update of the Ang Lee film (which was also co-written by Schamus) is “extremely relevant,” Ahn found it to be “kind of timeless in the way,” with its themes of immigration, fertility, queerness and chosen family.
“But it’s not that truncheon about those things. It’s not like didactic necessarily. It’s just a warm, beautiful invitation into this world,” he added.
Bowen Yang — who stars in The Wedding Banquet as Chris, one half of two same-sex couples that pull a good old-fashioned hetero switcheroo to please a more traditional loved one — explained that kind of representation “builds these cultural bridges to these otherwise isolated, siloed-off places in the world, and even in this country, where it feels like those things would never cross paths. And so, I think it’s more important than ever that the movie comes out.”
One such cultural bridge was built to co-star Han Gi-chan, who plays Chris’ boyfriend Min, recalling a “cultural shock” of filming in Canada as a Korean-based actor. Ahn remembered watching the young talent note in his script that “guncle” is a contraction for “gay uncle.”
“Actually, in Korea, the queer movement is not that popular. In the U.S., it’s a little different,” said Han. “So actually, I am learning by the filming in Vancouver, I was learning how the queer systems are by these actors and also by Andrew and all the other people. I didn’t know there was a Gay Street in Vancouver. That was really a cultural shock to me. I keep learning about it.”
Lily Gladstone, who stars as Chris and Min’s friend Lee, considers the remake “so meaningful” during an “incredibly scary time” in which Trump has already signed multiple executive executive orders targeting transgender and LGBTQ people.
“One of my old students was here at Sundance and has X on their ID, and was afraid that they wouldn’t be able to leave the airport because that’s illegal now,” she said. “So, it’s happening, we’re feeling it already.”
Gladstone stressed, “You can’t erase human beings. You can’t erase who we are, you can’t erase culture, you can’t erase experience, and all of that is based on fear. But what we’ve built here is really showcasing something built in love, and hopefully that serves as a safe space for folks.”
Quoting late filmmaker, gay rights activist and “a big hero of mine” Derek Jarman, Plainclothes star Russell Tovey said, “If you wait long enough, the world moves in circles.”
“He said this in the late ’80s, and he was making films then,” noted Tovey. “And you think now, the rhetoric that’s been happening in the last few days, the precariousness for our community, how much we will have to get together and support each other, and you just think this film should be a period drama. It feels like it’s absolutely, if not happening already, going to happen again.”
In writer-director Carmen Emmi‘s feature debut, Tovey plays a gay man pursued by an undercover cop (Tom Blyth) with plans to entrap him in a ’90s cruising sting operation in New York, only for the pair to fall in love.
After reading in the Los Angeles Times about police arresting gay men in a similar bathroom sting, in addition to the experience of his brother becoming a police officer, Emmi channeled his own coming-out experience into the script. For another personal touch, he filmed it in his hometown of Syracuse, N.Y.
“It was all very intentional,” he said. “I think it was a full-circle moment because I really suppressed my feelings as a boy, and getting to make this very personal film, this very personal queer film there and have people rally behind it was just — my younger self was beaming the entire time.”
Emmi added, “As a boy, I felt like at 12, it was more important or appropriate to hit a boy than hug him, and I think that that kind of vibe may be in policing as well, but I think it’s a cultural thing that we’re taught that I’m trying to dismantle. Because I feel like if people can be their true selves and be more open, it will help them feel more free later on, I suppose.”
For Amy Forsyth, who plays Emily, Plainclothes was significant as the first film she’s made since coming out as queer herself.
“To tell queer stories is imperative now more than ever,” she said. “I mean, it’s always been important, but it’s a scary world out there. So, it’s an honor to be a part of it, and I hope it reaches maybe the people who aren’t really expecting to watch this, because it’s for them too.”
As the LGBTQ talent at Sundance will attest, our community is not a monolith, and neither was the representation. Twinless writer, director and star James Sweeney kicked off the festival with his sophomore feature, the perfect twisted dark comedy to begin the week, showcasing the uniquely beautiful and messy human experience of being queer.
“I don’t necessarily approach my work in the sense of I’m trying to make a queer protagonist’s struggles relatable. It’s, I guess, more instinctual than that,” Sweeney told me. “I’m happy if it in any way — I guess I find there’s always universality in specificity, and anytime we can normalize queer characters as just going through the same struggles that we all deal with, whether that’s loneliness, whether that’s rejection… I think that just helps build empathy. I think that’s one of the most powerful things of storytelling, is the ability to put yourself in somebody else’s shoes.”
In Audience Award winner Twinless, Sweeney plays a gay man who meets Roman (Dylan O’Brien) at a twin bereavement support group. Although their reasons for being there ultimately differ, a bizarre lie leads to a real connection between the pair.
And while the film’s current pirated popularity might be due to some steamy scenes between Sweeney and O’Brien, it was their characters’ mix of raw heart and relatable suffering that had the Sundance audience hooked at the Eccles Theater, as well as Sweeney’s big act two twist.
“I believe all art is political,” said Sweeney, adding, “At the end of the day, I’m just trying to tell stories that are humanist. I think being queer just falls under that umbrella because we are human.”
Aud Mason-Hyde, a young nonbinary actor who plays Frances, a fictional version of themself in their writer-director mother Sophie Hyde’s family drama Jimpa, represents a new generation of young LGBTQ people who’ve grown up in a more informed society.
“I mean, I think what’s amazing about Mum and I’s relationship that I haven’t seen many other people have, and I feel so lucky to have, is that we have for each other great respect, and she really sees me as an adult and as a human. And I see her the same,” explained Mason-Hyde. “So, my autonomy, but also the autonomy of the character, was really championed, and I just felt that Frances could be totally themself around Sophie as a director.”
Starring Olivia Colman as Frances’ warm mother Hannah, and John Lithgow as their spirited gay grandfather, the titular Jimpa, the film represents multiple generations of the LGBTQ community through an authentic and empathetic perspective.
With their father Bryan Mason onboard as a producer and editor, Jimpa is a family affair in every sense, which truly deserves to be seen by all families.
Mason-Hyde previously started the trans-led, youth-centered community arts organization TransMedium with friend Claud Bailey. They put out DreamLife, a free magazine made by a committee of young trans people from all over Australia, “full of their hopes and dreams for the future, or the beauty that they’re already living. It’s a way of showcasing our joy to other young trans people.”
Whether it’s the grassroots ingenuity of an organization like TransMedium or the grand spectacle of Bill Condon’s Kiss of the Spider Woman movie musical adaptation starring Jennifer Lopez, LGBTQ representation isn’t going away from Sundance anytime soon, despite ongoing attacks against the community, including anti-DEI laws that impact University of Utah students in nearby Salt Lake City, among millions of others across the country.
Taking a more direct approach to such attacks, ACLU’s Chase Strangio explores courtroom battles against transgender rights in the Sundance documentary Heightened Scrutiny. Directed by Sam Feder, the doc also looks at how media narratives impact the public perception of the trans community.
Meanwhile, Sarah Jessica Parker served as an executive producer on the Kim A. Snyder-helmed doc The Librarians, looking at how the titular public servants have responded to book bans in Texas, Florida and beyond, becoming warriors for democracy and free access to information.
GLAAD — which co-hosted Sundance’s second annual ‘Cheers Queers’ event with Frameline and Newfest — previously reported in its 2024 Studio Responsibility Index that onscreen representation at the movies has declined to 27.3%, a slight decrease from the record high of 28.5% of films released in 2023 that featured LGBTQ characters.
In the wake of a string of policies targeting the LGBTQ community, implemented in the first days of Trump’s second term, it is up to the entertainment community to make sure that percentage doesn’t slip further in the coming years.
“We have to stay visible. We have to keep telling queer stories,” Tovey said. “We have to make sure that there is a humanization of our community that we’re seeing, because it’s going to be so easy to demonize, and we can’t let that happen. And the way you do that is through art, and art changes lives. So we have to do that. We have to connect as many people as we can.”
