Pride Month 2021: Seven coming-of-age films about love, identity and the queer experience

There’s nothing binary about a Bildungsroman; here are some must-watches that highlight diversity within the LGBTQIA+ community, and show the path ahead

Adolescence is often times a turbulent whirlwind of self discovery, disorientation and disquietude. The exploration of identity is central to the coming-of-age experience, whether it be religious, sexual, political or personal. There is ambiguity in this exploration of gender and nationality, of the relationship between the self and the world, as adulthood looms overhead, threatening to categorise, pigeonhole and mould bodies into already existing paradigms of being. . Queer cinema celebrates this ambiguity. It is not one thing, but many; first love, heartache, hysteria, euphoria, pain, loss and almost always, gain. For a large majority of the LGBTQIA+ youth, the acceptance of their identity and formal revelation to the world makes adolescence a much harder period to navigate, as nonconformity is unconventional in the adult world of reason and rationality.