Best movies like The Swimmer
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
Erez, a rising star in the Israeli swimming scene, arrives at a godforsaken training camp held in a boarding school. The winner of the competition held there wins one ticket to the Olympics. There he meets Nevo, beautiful, gifted, who awakens subconscious desires in him. However, their swimming coach does not believe in friendships between competitors. Warned to stay away from Nevo, Erez is still too attracted to him. In between practices, he attempts to act upon his feelings….
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 821
Genere: Drama, Sport
Country: Israel
Duration: 84 min
Plot tags: erotic, lgbt cinema, gay cinema
Best tv shows and movies like The Swimmer (2021):
Similar in 78%
The Male Gaze: Strikers & Defenders (2020)
Plot Summary:
Work up a sweat from the soccer field to the locker room in these drama-fueled four films from Germany, France and the UK that explore how rivalry between teams can spill over into teacher-pupil relationships, high school crushes and brotherly compassion. The short films are: Islands [Inseln] (2018); Play It Like a Man [Un été viril] (2018); Colours (2015); Through the Fields [Passer les champs] (2015).
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 87
Genere: Drama, Sport
Country: France, Germany, UK
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: psychological, tense, touching, unusual plot structure, contemplative
Similar in 81%
The Male Gaze: Nocturnal Instincts (2021)
Plot Summary:
Strap yourself in for an exhilarating journey into darkness with these five award-winning short films from across the globe that delve into heart-pumping escapades varying from the intensely erotic to the ultra-violent to the warm-inside feels. The night has never looked so inviting. Segments: After Dawn [Passée l'aube] (2017), Poof (2018), Spiral (2018), Night of Love (2018), Floating Melon [浮果] (2015).
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 90
Genere: Drama
Country: UK, Sweden, Israel, China, Belgium
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: psychological, suspense, disturbing, anthology
Similar in 76%
Golden Delicious (2022)
Plot Summary:
When a hot, openly gay new neighbour moves in across the street, high school senior Jake is forced to think about what - and who - he really wants.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 361
Genere: Drama, Romance, Sport
Country: Canada
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: gay cinema, queer cinema
Similar in 87%
In from the Side (2022)
Plot Summary:
Two men in a gay men's rugby club must conceal an adulterous affair they unwittingly fall into before it leads to the collapse of the delicate social and political fabric of the club.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama, Romance, Sport
Country: UK
Duration: 134 min
Plot tags: art house, queer cinema
Similar in 80%
Amazing Grace (1992)
Plot Summary:
A drama about two families, each with a gay son. Jonathan is splitting from Miki because the more experienced Miki is playing around. Then Jonathan sees Thomas, the son and grandson of his neighbors, who is back in Israel after failing to make it as a musician in New York: Thomas is ill, detached, in search of hard drugs. Jonathan tries to connect with him. Meanwhile, Thomas's grandmother, facing old age, has become bitter, particularly toward her hard-working daughter. They worry about Thomas. A few blocks away, Jonathan's mother, brother and sister maintain their sometimes bickering relationships, watching Jonathan brave adulthood.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 169
Genere: Drama
Country: Israel
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: queer cinema
Similar in 77%
Praxis (2008)
Plot Summary:
Praxis peels away the layers of narrative even as Brian, the film's axis, struggles to create his true self. Brian, a writer on the verge of a breakdown, is aided by Joe and an Elusive Woman as he sifts through the fragments of his persona to discover his true core. Fighting against fear and the indifference of society - aptly symbolized by the medical establishment - his quest reflects the classical mythos of Proteus and the human search for meaning in the universe.
IMDB Rating: 3.4
IMDB Votes: 151
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags:
Similar in 86%
Body Electric (2017)
Plot Summary:
Elias is a handsome young deputy manager in a garment factory in São Paulo. When he’s not working, he enjoys casual encounters in the big city. The arrival of a young African, Fernando, on the production line piques his interest and Elias finds himself increasingly drawn into socialising with his work colleagues.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 896
Genere: Drama
Country: Brazil
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: queer cinema
Similar in 86%
Lie with Me (2022)
Plot Summary:
An author returns to his hometown of Cognac for the first time in 35 years to help promote a distillery. Once there, he meets his first love’s son, Lucas. Memories come rushing back to him: irrepressible attraction, bodies becoming one in the heat of desire, a passion that can never be revealed… His first love’s name was Thomas. They were 17.
IMDB Rating: 7.6
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: gay cinema
Similar in 81%
B-Boy Blues (2021)
Plot Summary:
Follows the relationship of 27-year-old journalist Mitchell Crawford and 21-year-old bicycle messenger Raheim Rivers, who meet at a gay bar in Greenwich Village during the summer of 1993.
IMDB Rating: 4.6
IMDB Votes: 638
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: queer cinema
Similar in 81%
Barracuda (2016)
Plot Summary:
Danny Kelly is a talented swimmer attends a prestigious Melbourne private school on a sporting scholarship. Working class, half Greek and half Scottish, he cops his fair share of harassment from the privileged students. Danny yearns to win swimming gold at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. He is taken under the wing of highly regarded coach, Frank Torma and develops a friendship/rivalry with teammate Martin Taylor which inspire Danny to become Australia's youngest swimming champion.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Sport
Country: Australia
Duration: 60 min
Plot tags: queer cinema, masterpiece
Similar in 90%
Fixing Frank (2002)
Plot Summary:
Frank (Miller) is a gay journalist who goes undercover at the urging of his therapist boyfriend Jonathan (Provenza) to write an exposé of Dr. Apsey (Butler). Apsey performs conversion therapy on gay male clients, a practice which Jonathan finds reprehensible. Frank quickly comes clean with Apsey but continues to meet with him under the pretense of interviewing him, but finds himself questioning himself, Jonathan and their six-year relationship.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 490
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: queer cinema, cult film
Similar in 75%
Punch (2022)
Plot Summary:
Jim is preparing for his first professional fight but begins to rethink his life's trajectory and his sexuality after tangling with Whetu, a gay Maori boy who spends his days in an old shack down by the beach.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Sport
Country: New Zealand
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: psychological, captivating, disturbing, gay cinema, queer cinema
Similar in 75%
Little Gay Boy (2013)
Plot Summary:
A young gay boy, from his birth to his teenage years, in which he experiments his sexuality and his own boundaries, to the day he finally meets his father.
IMDB Rating: 4.6
IMDB Votes: 164
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 72 min
Plot tags: psychological, captivating, disturbing, experimental, avant garde, queer cinema
Similar in 80%
Breaking the Surface: The Greg Louganis Story (1997)
Plot Summary:
Breaking the Surface is about the tough times Greg Louganis had on his way to becoming one of the world's top Olympic divers. Some topics discussed were Greg's childhood problems, his homosexuality, and him contracting the HIV virus.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 712
Genere: Biography, Drama, Sport
Country: USA, Canada
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: sincere, uplifting, touching, serious, captivating, emotional, realistic, queer cinema
Similar in 76%
José (2018)
Plot Summary:
José (19 years old) lives with his mother (50s) in Guatemala: a tough life in one of the world's most dangerous, religious, and impoverished countries. José is her youngest and favorite child, and her life is going to church and selling sandwiches. Jose spends his days on crowded buses and in the streets delivering food. Resigned and aloof, in free moments he plays with his phone and looks for random sex. When he meets Luis, Jose is thrust into a dimension of passion and pain and self-reflection that was previously unimaginable.
IMDB Rating: 6.7
IMDB Votes: 820
Genere: Drama
Country: USA, Guatemala
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, suspenseful, disturbing, queer cinema
Similar in 83%
Beyto (2020)
Plot Summary:
Talented swimmer, motivated apprentice, cool buddy: Beyto is in the midst of life. But when the only son of a Turkish migrant family falls in love with his coach Mike, an ideal world falls to pieces. His parents only see one way out: They lure him to their home village and plan his wedding with Seher, his childhood friend. Suddenly, Beyto finds himself in a disruptive love triangle.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Switzerland
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: romantic, touching, emotional, talky, lgbt cinema, queer cinema, gay cinema
Similar in 83%
The Night of the Wolf (2014)
Plot Summary:
A mythical journey of the customs of homosexuality.
IMDB Rating: 4.2
IMDB Votes: 44
Genere: Drama
Country: Argentina
Duration: 77 min
Plot tags: lgbt cinema, sexy, psychological, light, art house, homoerotic, gay cinema
Similar in 75%
Dry Wind (2020)
Plot Summary:
The area around Catalan in Brazil’s state of Goiás is dry, very dry. Sandro’s life here is somewhat monotonous. He works in a fertiliser factory, goes swimming and spends his evenings doing jigsaw puzzles of landscapes. When Maicon, a man straight out of a Tom of Finland illustration, shows up in their small town and flirts with Ricardo, Sandro’s burgeoning feelings of jealousy set a change in motion.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Brazil
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: sentimental, sexy, psychological, unusual plot structure, lgbt cinema, erotic, gay cinema, queer cinema
Similar in 75%
Hidden Pleasures (1977)
Plot Summary:
The plot follows a middle-aged, closeted homosexual banker from a wealthy family, who falls in love with a much younger heterosexual man.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 329
Genere: Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: social, independent film, gay cinema
Similar in 75%
Like It Is (1998)
Plot Summary:
A young, bare-knuckle boxer Craig (played by real-life boxer Steve Bell) moves from Blackpool to London, where he falls for a twenty-something music producer, Matt. Trouble ensues when shy, awkward Craig tries squeezing into Matt's glib lifestyle and Matt's scheming boss (played by Roger Daltrey) tries to break up the couple.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Romance, Sport
Country: UK
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: lgbt cinema, independent film, rough, sexy, serious, emotional, realistic, sexual, queer cinema, gay cinema
Similar in 78%
Mario (2018)
Plot Summary:
Two young gay soccer players get caught up between the politics of the game and the politics of love. In Swiss German.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama, Romance, Sport
Country: Switzerland
Duration: 124 min
Plot tags: lgbt cinema, sentimental, captivating, touching, psychological, romantic, art house, ambiguous ending, crying, gay cinema
Similar in 86%
Teenage Kicks (2016)
Plot Summary:
Miklós is at the age when everything feels high-stakes. He is coming to terms with his own sexuality, and when his best friend Dan reveals that he has a new girlfriend, this puts an end to their plans to run away together.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Australia
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: lgbt cinema, homoerotic, captivating, suspenseful, psychological, unusual plot structure, suspense, contemplative, independent film, queer cinema
Similar in 75%
Land of Storms (2014)
Plot Summary:
Szabolcs plays in a German football team, as does Bernard. They are roommates, best friends, inseparable. A lost match makes him reconsider his life and he goes back to Hungary in hope for more simplicity. Yet his solitude does not last long. Soon after his arrival he meets Áron and a mutual attraction between the two boys develops when suddenly Szabolcs receives an unexpected phone call from Bernard: he has arrived to Hungary.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama, Romance, Sport
Country: Hungary, Germany
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: emotional, realistic, psychological, captivating, lgbt cinema, meditative, cute, tense, atmospheric, touching
Similar in 76%
Personal Best (1982)
Plot Summary:
This film chronicles the relationship of two female world-class athletes. Mariel Hemingway and real-life Olympian pentathlete Patrice Donnelly play runners who train together, compete against each other and eventually become lovers. Scott Glenn plays their coach in this film that culminates with the trials for the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, Sport
Country: USA
Duration: 128 min
Plot tags: sexual, erotic, tense, sentimental, sincere, uplifting, touching, serious, realistic, crying
Similar in 81%
What We Have (2014)
Plot Summary:
What We Have is is the tale of Maurice, a prisoner of his past who is unable to connect with the people in his new Northern Canadian small town, a community that is only too ready to welcome this European misfit into their arms.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 233
Genere: Drama
Country: Canada
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: psychological, sentimental, romantic, sexy, touching, unusual plot structure, melancholic, gay cinema, queer cinema
Similar in 78%
Label Me (2019)
Plot Summary:
Sex is power, and Waseem, a Syrian gay-for-pay hustler seeking asylum in Cologne, wields it like a shield. Keeping his johns at an emotional arm’s length while satisfying their most carnal desires in order to eke out a living, he meets his match in Lars: a kind, affluent professional with a growing personal interest in Waseem. This gripping tale of transactional identity explores the tactical exchange of trust and intimacy in a partnership, and the divisions between immigrants and their host countries in contemporary Europe.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: Germany
Duration: 60 min
Plot tags: psychological, sentimental, romantic, sexy, touching, unusual plot structure, melancholic, contemplative, gay cinema
Similar in 84%
Cal (2013)
Plot Summary:
Twenty-year-old Cal returns from France to Britain after receiving news that his mother is ill. His finds his home city of Bristol facing hard economic times brought on by the global economic crisis, with poverty and crime on the rise and rioting and looting almost a nightly occurrence. It is not a warm homecoming as his sick mother remains stubbornly homophobic and wants nothing to do with the now openingly gay Cal while his battered Auntie Jane, now living in a run down council house, dulls her stagnation with welfare funded booze and disturbing attempts to sexually seduce her nephew. Navigating his way across this new landscape he meets a young student who needs his help. However his act of kindness brings him into contact with a lawless drug dealing pimp and a race against time to make peace with his mother and get out of town as quickly as possible. An intense tale of a family mired in poverty, angry and lost but still searching for love, respect and acceptance.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 474
Genere: Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, suspenseful, erotic, tense, gloomy, gay cinema, queer cinema
Similar in 78%
Tiger Orange (2014)
Plot Summary:
In the small Central California town where they grew up, two estranged gay brothers struggle to reconnect after the recent death of their father.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 75 min
Plot tags: psychological, serious, captivating, realistic, lgbt cinema, homoerotic, queer cinema
Similar in 82%
Hidden Kisses (2016)
Plot Summary:
Nathan, 16, lives alone with his father Stephane. A newcomer in high school, he is invited to a party and falls in love with Louis, a boy in his class. They find themselves out of sight and kiss each other, but someone takes a picture of them. Soon, the photo is published on Facebook and a storm overtakes their lives as they face bullying and rejection.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama
Country: France
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: lgbt cinema, realistic, captivating, disturbing, existential, cute, melancholic, atmospheric, gay cinema, queer cinema
Similar in 88%
End of the Century (2019)
Plot Summary:
Two men meet in Barcelona and after spending a day together they realize that they have already met twenty years ago.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama
Country: Argentina
Duration: 84 min
Plot tags: unusual plot structure, sexy, psychological, sentimental, romantic, captivating, melancholic, lgbt cinema, queer cinema, gay cinema