Pride 2025: A Q+ Celebration!
June 23
Ratched
Created by Ryan Murphy and starring Sarah Paulson, Ratched offers a stylish, twisted origin story for the infamous Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. But don’t expect a straightforward villain tale, this 2020 Netflix series is soaked in saturated colors, campy horror, and complicated queerness. At the heart of it all is Mildred Ratched herself: cold, calculating, and secretly navigating her attraction to the brilliant and empathetic Gwendolyn Briggs, played by Cynthia Nixon.
The show revels in its drama and gothic aesthetic, but it also explores queer love and survival in an era of repression. With its over-the-top flair and dark emotional core, Ratched is a love letter to classic horror and the queer women who have too often been erased from it.
Where to watch? Ratched is available to stream on Netflix.
In Universes by Emet North
In this dazzling and deeply moving speculative debut, Emet North crafts a story that defies genre and bends time, gender, and identity. In Universes follows Raffi, a queer scientist searching for dark matter by day and emotionally spiraling by night as their personal life unravels. Their obsession with Britt—a sculptor who once meant everything to them—leads them down a cosmic rabbit hole. What if, in another universe, things had played out differently?
As Raffi slips through parallel worlds where women dissolve into animals and the apocalypse lurks around every corner, they pursue a version of life that feels truly theirs. North’s writing is as cerebral as it is lyrical, exploring themes of transness, intimacy, artistic hunger, and the persistence of hope across multiverses. Fans of Everything Everywhere All At Once and the work of Carmen Maria Machado will find this a queer speculative triumph.
Where to buy? In Universes is available to purchase at all reputable booksellers.
Water Lilies
Céline Sciamma’s 2007 directorial debut Water Lilies is a tender and uncompromising look at teenage girlhood, desire, and the complex waters of sexual awakening. Set in the suburbs of Paris, the film follows three 15-year-old girls—Marie, Anne, and Floriane—as they navigate the rigid world of synchronized swimming and the even murkier world of adolescent emotions. When Marie becomes infatuated with the beautiful and elusive Floriane, an intense friendship develops that blurs the line between admiration and longing.
With its quiet confidence and razor-sharp observations, Water Lilies captures the awkward beauty of coming of age in a heteronormative world while discovering something entirely different within yourself. It’s an essential piece of lesbian cinema and a masterclass in restraint from a filmmaker who would go on to shape the future of queer storytelling.
Where to watch? Water Lilies is available to stream on The Criterion Channel and available for rental on Prime Video.
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Featured Image: Images Courtesy of Netflix, Max, Amazon MGM Studios, Focus Feature, Getty Images, Disney+, Apple TV.
