As LGBTQ characters and stories become the norm — mercifully, no longer an outlier or cause for surprise — it’s more important than ever to check your sources.
Just as you study the labels on your food or the sustainability of your clothing, audiences should be informed as to who is behind the camera (and pages) when it comes to queer stories. While we’d never dictate what stories creators are allowed to write, the proof is often in the pudding when it comes to queer film and TV. As proven by the diabolical gay delights of “The White Lotus” or the lustfully longing glances in “A Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” it just hits different when we’re in charge.
In an industry that often purports to celebrate difference until it comes to who gets the big bucks, LGBTQ talent often have to work twice as hard to get half as far in Hollywood. Trace Lysette served as an executive producer on her new film “Monica,” which took over six years to secure funding despite having Patricia Clarkson attached. On the TV side, even when queer-led projects earn critical acclaim and dedicated followings, it’s rare to get more than two seasons. “Work in Progress,” “Los Espookys,” and “A League of Their Own” are recent examples of beloved queer series that were canceled too soon.
When it comes to directing and showrunning, mentorship is the main way emerging talent can gain experience on film and TV sets. As the recent WGA strike put forth as one of the union’s many talking points, opportunities for learning on the job are falling by the wayside in the new system. For marginalized creators who may be shut out from other ways in the door, this discrepancy is felt exponentially. Although demand for LGBTQ content is rising, there seem to be fewer paths to success for queer creators than ever. With such narrow margins, every success deserves major recognition.
In the spirit of being in the know, it’s important to highlight and celebrate the queer filmmakers, writers, and creators who are setting — and raising — the bar for queer storytelling. Whether they’ve been household names for awhile or are just beginning to make their presence felt, here are ten LGBTQ creators on the rise in June 2023.
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Zackary Drucker
Image Credit: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for SXSW To quote one of the greatest semi-queer TV shows of all time, “The Wire,” the queen stays the queen. But unlike those born into royalty, Zackary Drucker has been hustling hard for her crown. She’s been a mover and shaker since her days as a producer on “Transparent,” and she really stepped into her own in 2021 as co-director of the riveting HBO docuseries “The Lady and The Dale.” This year, she really took her rightful place center stage to direct the Hulu series “Queenmaker: The Making of an It Girl.” She also co-directed (with Kristen Lovell) “The Stroll,” a long overdue documentary about the history of trans sex workers in New York’s Meatpacking District. Drucker is the definition of putting in the work, and it’s high time she gets her flowers.
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Stewart Thorndike
Image Credit: Courtesy of Stewart Thorndike Whatever image is conjured up by the phrase “feminist horror,” Stewart Thorndike’s films cannot be defined by such a tidy catchphrase. Wholly original and deeply rooted in genre film history, her films use horror tropes to probe the darker sides of motherhood, relationships, and emotional interiority. Her 2014 feature “Lyle” starred Gaby Hoffmann as a mother grieving her toddler, earning indie film street cred for its queer twist on “Rosemary’s Baby.” She’ll soon follow that up with the queer ensemble thriller “Bad Things”: Thorndike’s take on “The Shining,” which stars the powerhouse “GLOW” star Gayle Rankin as an even messier Jack Torrance.
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Luis De Filippis
Image Credit: Araya Doheny/Getty Images One of the youngest filmmakers on this list, Luis De Filippis is just getting started. A Canadian filmmaker of Italian descent, her debut feature “Something You Said Last Night” is a sharply observed family dramedy that just so happens to have a trans lead. Featuring a standout comedic performance by Ramona Milano (“Degrassi: The Next Generation”) as an overly supportive mother, the film follows a directionless twenty-something trans girl named Renata (Carmen Madonia) over one week of family vacation. Sensitively rendered and elegantly charming, the strong debut marks De Filippis as a talent to watch.
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Anthony Caronna
Image Credit: Courtesy of the Filmmaker After a rockstar launch in 2017 with “Susanne Bartsch: On Top,” a fabulously reverent documentary about New York City’s hardest-working nightlife icon, Anthony Caronna proved themself a master of making vital queer history feel contemporary and fresh. That impressive debut caught the eye of revered indie production company Killer Films, which tapped them to direct the 1980s episode of the FX docuseries “Pride” in 2021. Caronna will take full control this summer with “Last Call,” a true-crime docuseries for HBO about a string of murders that haunted New York’s queer community in the 1990s.
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Sébastien Lifshitz
Image Credit: Thomas Niedermueller/Getty Images for ZFF Though he’s already firmly established in Europe as an award-winning narrative and documentary filmmaker, French director and screenwriter Sébastien Lifshitz has recently crossed over into the U.S. market with a string of documentaries about the trans experience. With tender vulnerability and care, the elegantly captured “Little Girl” follows a transgender 7-year-old and her fiercely loving mother as they contend with restrictive school policies in small town France. For his first English-language film, he followed that up with the riveting “Casa Susanna,” which unearthed a hidden chapter of trans history by finding patrons of an upstate New York summer getaway for crossdressers active in the ’50s and ’60s.
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D. Smith
Image Credit: Courtesy of the Filmmaker Earning multiple awards out of its Berlinale and Sundance festival run, “Kokomo City” arrived like a breath of fresh air into the often staid and predictable documentary film world. Creatively shot by the filmmaker herself, former music producer D. Smith took matters into her own hands when no company would fund a film about Black trans sex workers. With honesty and humor, Smith created a safe space for her subjects to be their beautifully unvarnished selves, discussing a range of topics that usually stay behind closed doors. The film received a tragic round of publicity when one of its stars, Koko da Doll, was found murdered in April. Her death is a painful reminder of the film’s vital importance, especially as anti-trans sentiment and laws proliferate around the country.
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Julio Torres
Image Credit: JC Olivera/Getty Images Everyone’s favorite weirdo comedian, Julio Torres has forged a career in comedy unlike any other. He began as a writer on “Saturday Night Live” before launching the delightful horror comedy series “Los Espookys” on HBO. A proud Salvadoran immigrant, he tells stories rooted in the absurdity of the immigrant experience that also speak to anyone who lives outside societal norms. His debut feature film, “Problemista,” takes a surrealist approach to the alienating experience of existing between borders. The film stars Torres opposite an unhinged Tilda Swinton in what is sure to be one of the summer’s biggest hits.
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Emma Seligman
Image Credit: Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for ELLE After announcing their arrival with the massively successful micro-budget comedy “Shiva Baby,” Emma Seligman rapidly secured their bag, selling a pilot about sugar babies to Adam McKay’s company. Their second feature, the high school-set queer sex comedy “Bottoms,” arrived with considerably more fanfare, and the trailer has already fanned the internet flames that thirst for irreverent queer comedies. Collaborating with their “Shiva Baby” star and muse Rachel Sennott as an official co-writer, “Bottoms” is all but guaranteed to become the “Fire Island” of this summer.
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Laura Moss
Image Credit: Fred Hayes/Getty Images for SAGindie A twisted mind with a reverence for canonical horror, Laura Moss swung big with their feature debut, the riveting medical horror “birth/rebirth.” The film offers a queer riff on Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” making subtext text while keeping things unhinged and unpredictable. Premiering at Sundance earlier this year before its Shudder release this August, “birth/rebirth” stars the excellent Marin Ireland as a morgue technician obsessed with reanimating the dead. She spends her nights conducting unsanctioned experiments at home, where she is discovered by a grieving mother and nurse played by Judy Reyes. Bonded by their unnerving mission to bring her little girl back to life, the women push experimentation to the limit as they become embroiled in each other’s madness.
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River Gallo
Image Credit: Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images As many strides as LGBTQ film has made in the last decade, most audiences remain in the dark about the lives of intersex people. River Gallo is out to change that. An intersex activist, filmmaker, and performer, Gallo is a driving force in two exciting new films about the intersex experience. Based on their award-winning short of the same name, Gallo wrote and will star in the upcoming feature “Ponyboi,” about an intersex sex worker in a tempestuous romance. The film stars Dylan O’Brien and Murray Bartlett and is slated to premiere sometime next year. Before that, Gallo will appear as a subject in “Every Body,” a new documentary about the lives of three intersex folks directed by Julie Cohen (“RBG”).
