Todd Haynes’ atmospheric lesbian love story, Carol, has been named the best LGBT film of all time in a top 30 list that stretches to a Weimar-era pupil-teacher romance from 1931.

Carol, which was released last year and stars Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, came top of a poll compiled to mark the 30th anniversary of the London lesbian and gay film festival, BFI Flare.

Just behind Carol was Andrew Haigh’s 2011 film, Weekend, followed by Wong Kar-wai’s 1997 Hong Kong romance, Happy Together, and at No 4, Ang Lee’s tearjerker Brokeback Mountain.

But it was Carol, an adaptation by Phyllis Nagy of Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel, The Price of Salt, which topped a poll of more than 100 film experts that included past and present festival programmers.

It was a film adored by critics, including the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw who called it intoxicating. He added: “It is almost as if the transgression, secrecy and wrongness must paradoxically emerge in the well-judged rightness and just-so-ness of all its period touches.”

It got six Oscar nominations and nine Bafta nominations, although it came home empty-handed from both award ceremonies.

Cate Blanchett was nominated for an Oscar for her role as Carol Aird. Photograph: Moviestore/Rex Shutterstock

Tricia Tuttle, deputy head of festivals at the BFI, said it was no surprise that Carol came out top. “Haynes is an absolutely beloved film-maker inside and outside LGBT cinema circles and this is one of his finest films.

“Everyone has their favourite Todd Haynes and this is certainly mine, I voted for it. Given the relative lack of lesbian content in cinema it is nice to see it come top.”

Haynes said he was proud Carol had won. “Carol is in illustrious company with so many films I love, from Brokeback Mountain and Un Chant d’Amour to Happy Together and My Own Private Idaho.”

Weekend, a 2011 romance is currently making headlines in Italy, where it was declared “not recommended, unusable and indecent by the Vatican-based film board, the Italian Episcopal Conference, this month.

Many of Italy’s arthouse cinemas are owned by the church, which severely reduced the number of screens on which it could be shown for its belated Italian release, according to distributor Teodora Film.

Robin Baker, head curator of the BFI archive, said Weekend was not about “gay issues” but real people and real situations. He called it “a wonderful antidote to the cliches of LGBT cinema ... This is the very best kind of relationship drama – gay or otherwise.”

One of those cliches might be the number of LGBT-themed films which end badly, so it is striking that the top two films have uplifting endings. Tuttle said it was important that LGBT cinema did not have LGBT stereotypes. “We want dramatically complex, rich, compelling characters,” she said.

Stephen Frears’ My Beautiful Laundrette with Daniel Day Lewis. Photograph: Everett/Rex/Shutterstock

The list will undoubtedly spark debate about omissions. The campaigner Peter Tatchell called it “a very interesting and good list” but said there were some major films missing, not least Derek Jarman’s Edward II and Sebastiane.

He also questioned the omission of Milk, Pride, Second Serve, or Cabaret. “I would also have included Rebel Without a Cause for its incredibly powerful gay sub text ... Sal Mineo’s crush on James Dean is never stated, but is very obvious.”

The film director and critic Mark Cousins, who contributed to the poll, agreed Jarman should be there and said he chose the director’s 1985 film Angelic Conversation. “I’m also disappointed that the Bill Douglas trilogy didn’t appear on more lists. There’s no sex in it, but it’s profoundly queer, I think, and one of the great Scottish films.”

Cousins said the BFI list shook up the canon. “We’re used to thinking of LGBT culture as minority or even marginal, yet so many of these films are central to the art of cinema. Beau Travail, Mulholland Drive, All About My Mother, Carol and Tropical Malady, for example, are some of the best films of the last generation.

“There are many banal queer films, but this list shows that, at its best, LGBT film is where the innovation is, where the new thinking’s being done. Two of Asia’s best filmmakers – Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Tsai Ming-liang – are queer, and the best films by straighter film-makers such as David Lynch and Claire Denis, are queer. Queerness is disruptive. It revives moribund genres, as Brokeback Mountain showed.”

The list also includes older films where risks were being taken given the illegality of homosexuality. Jean Genet’s 1950 film Un Chant d’Amour, for example, which film curator and writer Selina Robertson said “has one of the all-time top homoerotic moments in cinema” when two prison inmates share a cigarette through a hole by blowing smoke into the mouth of the other.

The oldest film on the list is, remarkably, from 1931: Mädchen in Uniform (Girls in Uniform), a Weimar-era German film that tells the story of a schoolgirl who falls in love with her female teacher. “It is incredibly explicit,” said Tuttle. “It is a really terrific film and it is definitely worthy revisiting.”

Mädchen In Uniform from 1931 was the oldest film on the list. Photograph: Moviestore/Rex/Shutterstock

Tuttle welcomed the poll as a means to stimulate debate. “For us, it is a moment to look back at the films we have celebrated over the years and look at how enduring so many of them are and look at how important so many LGBT stories are in the history of cinema. They are also a chance to remind audiences of films which might have faded from the memory but deserve to be seen again,” she said.

BFI’s best gay films



1 Carol (Todd Haynes, USA 2015).

2 Weekend (Andrew Haigh, UK 2011).

3 Happy Together (Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong/Japan/South Korea 1997).

4 Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, USA/ Canada 2005).

5 Paris Is Burning (Jennie Livingston, USA 1990).

6 Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand/France/Germany/Italy 2004).

7 My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, UK 1985).

8 All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain/France 1999).

9 Un Chant d’Amour (Jean Genet, France 1950).

10 My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant, USA 1991).

11= Tangerine (Sean Baker, USA 2015).

11= The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Germany 1972).

11= Blue Is the Warmest Colour (Abdellatif Kechiche, France/Belgium/Spain 2013).

14= Mädchen in Uniform (Leontine Sagan & Carl Froelich, Germany 1931).

14= Show Me Love (Lukas Moodysson, Sweden/Denmark 1998).

14= Orlando (Sally Potter, UK/Russia/Italy/France/Netherlands 1992).

17 Victim (Basil Dearden, UK 1961).

18 Je, tu, il, elle (Chantal Akerman, France/Belgium 1974).

19 Looking for Langston (Isaac Julien, UK 1989).

20= Beau Travail (Claire Denis, France 1999).

20= Beautiful Thing (Hettie Macdonald, UK 1996).

22= Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudie, France 2013).



22= Theorem (Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italy 1968).

22= The Watermelon Woman (Cheryl Dunye, USA 1996).

22= Pariah (Dee Rees, USA 2011)

22= Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, France/USA 2001).

27= Portrait of Jason (Shirley Clarke, USA 1967).

27= Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet, USA 1975).

27= Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti, Italy/France 1971).

27= Pink Narcissus (James Bidgood, USA 1971).

27= Sunday Bloody Sunday (John Schlesinger, UK 1971).

27= Tomboy (Céline Sciamma, France 2011).

27= Funeral Parade of Roses (Toshio Matsumoto, Japan 1969).