Pride Picks – Discover great gay stories.

Pride Picks: Stories of Resistance, Love, and LGBTQ+ History

Pride Picks on Dekkoo featuring LGBTQ+ films, documentaries, and stories celebrating Pride Month

Pride Month is a celebration. It’s also a reminder of the people, communities, and moments that helped shape the LGBTQ+ world we know today.

Pride Picks: Stories of Resistance, Love, and LGBTQ+ History

Pride Month is a celebration. It’s also a reminder of the people, communities, and moments that helped shape the LGBTQ+ world we know today.

This month, our Pride Picks collection brings together films that explore queer history, culture, activism, self-expression, and the personal stories that continue to move our community forward. Whether you’re looking for inspiring documentaries, unforgettable true stories, or powerful dramas, these selections offer a deeper look at the LGBTQ+ experience across generations and around the world.

Discover the Stories Behind Pride

Our Pride Picks collection features a diverse lineup of films that honor the voices, struggles, and triumphs that define queer history. Below are just a few:

Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution

What began as an underground movement in the 1980s quickly evolved into a cultural force. This fascinating documentary explores the artists, musicians, filmmakers, and activists who challenged both mainstream culture and traditional LGBTQ+ norms, helping create a new queer identity through art and rebellion.

Before Stonewall

Long before the Stonewall uprising became a symbol of LGBTQ+ liberation, generations of queer people were building communities, fighting discrimination, and living authentic lives. This landmark documentary traces the history of gay life in America throughout the twentieth century and remains essential viewing for anyone interested in understanding where the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement began.

Eismayer

Inspired by true events, this acclaimed drama tells the story of a feared military training officer whose carefully guarded life is upended when he develops feelings for an openly gay recruit. A moving story about identity, vulnerability, and acceptance, Eismayer reminds us that authenticity often requires extraordinary courage.

Saturday Night at the Baths

Step inside New York City’s legendary Continental Baths in this groundbreaking classic from 1975. Blending romance, music, and social history, the film captures a transformative era in LGBTQ+ culture and offers a fascinating glimpse into a world that helped shape modern queer life.

The Sons of Tennessee Williams

This uplifting documentary explores the rich history of New Orleans’ gay Mardi Gras traditions. Through archival footage and personal stories, it celebrates the creativity, resilience, and joy of LGBTQ+ communities that flourished even during times of widespread discrimination.

Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex, Fashion, & Disco

Fashion, art, sexuality, and self-expression collide in this vibrant portrait of legendary illustrator Antonio Lopez and the creative scene that helped define an era. It’s a celebration of queer influence on culture, style, and artistic freedom.

Looking for More LGBTQ+ Stories?

Pride Picks is just one way to explore the incredible range of LGBTQ+ entertainment available on Dekkoo.

If you’re looking for acclaimed classics, modern favorites, and hidden gems, browse our collection of gay movies.

Interested in stories centered on connection and relationships? Explore our guide to the best gay romance movies.

Looking for something a little more passionate? Discover our curated collection of steamy gay movies.

You can also browse all titles on Dekkoo to discover even more films, series, documentaries, and exclusive originals.

Why Pride Stories Matter

Pride isn’t only about looking back. It’s about understanding the people who came before us, recognizing the progress we’ve made, and celebrating the diverse voices that continue to shape LGBTQ+ culture today.

These films offer more than entertainment. They preserve history, spark conversation, and remind us of the resilience, creativity, and courage found throughout our community.

Stream the Complete Pride Picks Collection

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Explore the full Pride Picks collection and discover stories that celebrate queer history, culture, resistance, and self-expression.

Celebrate Pride Month With 50% Off

To help make Pride Month even more memorable, we’re offering a special limited-time discount for new subscribers.

Start your free trial of Dekkoo and use promo code PRIDE50 to receive 50% off your first six months or first year.

With hundreds of LGBTQ+ movies, series, documentaries, and exclusive originals available to stream, there’s never been a better time to discover everything Dekkoo has to offer.

Start streaming today and celebrate Pride Month with stories that inspire, entertain, and connect our community.

Pride Month Spotlight: Vito

“Enormously entertaining… Incisive and illuminating. This emotionally powerful documentary…is the stirring testament he deserves.” – The Hollywood Reporter

“Hugely moving and even more inspiring.” – LA Weekly

“I highly recommend it to anyone interested in pop culture, in civil rights, or in how the two are deeply connected. Through his story, ‘Vito’ becomes not just a biography but a history of his times, as a fight against discrimination became a fight for life.” – Time Magazine

“Involving… vibrant. A dramatic focal point in the history of gay rights.” – Variety

On June 27, 1969, a police raid on a Greenwich Village gay bar took a surprising turn when patrons decided it was time to fight back. As a riot erupted outside the Stonewall Inn, a new era in the Gay Rights Movement was born. You know the story.

Vito Russo, a 23-year-old film student, was among those in the crowd the unforgettable night. Over the next twenty years, until his death from AIDS in 1990, Vito would go on to become one of the most outspoken and inspiring activists in the LGBT community’s fight for equal rights.

In the midst of his involvement with Act Up and the fight against AIDS, Vito was also a prolific writer. His seminal book The Celluloid Closet explored the ways in which gay and lesbian characters were (most often subtly) portrayed on film, what lessons those characters taught gay and straight audiences, and how those negative images were at the root of society’s homophobia.

Even before the book was published, Vito was taking The Celluloid Closet on the road, traveling to gay film festivals and college campuses for an entertaining and informative lecture/ clip show that intertwined Vito’s love of show business and radical gay politics. He continued writing, lecturing, speaking out and acting up until just months before his death.

Directed by award-winner Jeffrey Schwarz (I Am Divine, Tab Hunter Confidential, The Fabulous Allen Carr), Vito paints a galvanizing portrait of this outspoken activist in the LGBT community’s struggle for equal rights, using period footage and film clips to capture a vibrant era of gay culture. It’s simply a must-see.

Vito is streaming right now on Dekkoo as one of our Pride Picks. Make sure you check it out if you haven’t seen it already!

Pride Month Spotlight: Raid of the Rainbow Lounge

On June 28, 2009, at 1:28 am, seven police officers and two agents from the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission swarmed into the Rainbow Lounge, a newly opened gay bar in Fort Worth. The raid lasted approximately 30 minutes. It occurred 40 years, to the date, after the Stonewall riots in New York City – and the parallels are haunting.

Five patrons were zip tied, arrested for public intoxication and taken to jail. Multiple others were arrested and/or detained and then later released. One patron, Chad Gibson, was taken to the emergency room with life threatening injuries and was charges with assault and public intoxication. Police claimed the whole incident was simply a routine inspection.

Writer-director Robert L. Camina knew he needed to capture what was going on. His film, Raid of the Rainbow Lounge, recounts the events of that night, their aftermath and the massive changes that followed. Attending almost every single event related to the raid, camera in hand, Camina was able to interview over 35 people and record over 50 hours of rallies, city council meetings, counter-protests and more.

In the wake of the raid, Fort Worth city leaders and members of the LGBTQ community took significant steps to create a better world for all its citizens. Fort Worth is now a leader in LGBTQ equality.

“I hope this film inspires people to get involved in their own community,” said Camina in his original Director’s Statement. “While city leaders need to be held accountable for the safety and well-being for all the people they represent, members of the community also need to speak up and initiate change.”

Raid of the Rainbow Lounge embodies the ideals set out by many grassroots organizations seeking progressive change. It’s also a textbook example of how a powerful piece of cinema can be a tool for that change. Raid premiered in Fort Worth in 2012 to a sold-out crowd, rave reviews and a media frenzy. The screening proved to be a watershed moment. It provided closure, healing and strengthening the bridges built between the Fort Worth Police Department and the local LGBTQ Community. It went on to screen at more than 30 film festivals all across North America and picked up some major awards and extra positive attention along the way.

You can stream Raid of the Rainbow Lounge right now on Dekkoo as one of our Pride Picks!

Pride Month Spotlight: The Apple Tree

When Gabe and Jonathan (played as young men by Jay Renshaw and Ryland Shelton) fall in love in the 1940s, they decide to spend their life together in secret. But as the times changed, so died the couple – who were eventually able to express their love openly.

When Jonathan unexpectedly passes away years later, Gabe (played as an older man Jerry Bornstein) is faced with a dilemma that many LGBT elders encounter when they move into retirement homes… going back into the closet.

A 30-minute short film, writer-director Matthew Ladensack’s The Apple Tree screened world-wide at LGBT film festivals, and ended up winning the Best Picture prize at Out in the Desert. The short was very powerful at the time it was released and over the intervening years, with many baby boomers entering assisted living homes, the story the film tells has become much louder and stronger – so much so that Ladensack is in the process of adapting it into a feature film.

The writer/director’s newest draft earned a spot in the Top 50 of the world famous Tracking Board Launch Pad feature screenplay contest and was a semi-finalist at the Nashville Film Festival Feature Screenplay Contest. The feature will focus not only on aging in the gay community, but on two generations of gay men coming together – a new primary character, Colton, is a closeted high school football player who ends up forming a close bond with Gabe and seeing, first hand, the experiences of his LGBTQ fore-bearers.

Make sure you check out the original short film before the full-length feature arrives. The Apple Tree is currently streaming on Dekkoo. It’s one of our Pride Month picks.

Pride Month Spotlight: Were the World Mine

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”

It doesn’t get better than this swoon-worthy, candy-colored musical about a high school boy who uses magic to turn many of the boys at school gay – just in time for a show-stopping production of a Shakespearean classic. Since its release, Were the World Mine has become a gay musical classic that we will return to again and again.

Timothy (Tanner Cohen) is a gay boy stranded in a private all-boys school, which is largely obsessed with rugby. Unfortunately, there’s only one thing about rugby that catches Timothy’s interest: he’s obsessed with the super-adorable star player Jonathan (Nathaniel David Becker).

Both boys are students in Ms. Tebbit’s English class (she’s played by the delightful Wendy Robie of “Twin Peaks” and The People Under the Stairs). She’s a teacher with a mission: to excite her students with the literature of the ages. When she decides to cast these two boys as the romantic leads in her production of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (and to cast boys in all of the female roles), she proves herself just as mischievous as Puck.

The rugby Coach and townspeople are up in arms, but for Timothy, it seems like his wildest romantic fantasies may be coming true. He finds, in the script, the recipe for a potion to make people gay. With just a few spritzes from his magic pansy, the entire town (filled with Christian fundamentalists) is soon whipped into frenzy as the glorious production night approaches.

This deliciously surreal confection from co-writer/director Thomas Gustafson, based on his own 2003 short film Fairies, is a true gem. The musical numbers are over-the-top, production values first-rate and the acting is as flawless as the adorable boys on display. Even the top critics agreed back in 2008 when the film first screened. After Elton called it “absolutely breathtaking” and The New York Times said it was “movie musical magic.” It also managed to snag over twenty audience and jury awards during its initial film festival run.

Swoon all over Were the World Mine RIGHT NOW on Dekkoo! It’s one of our treasured Pride Picks.

Pride Month Spotlight: This is What Love in Action Looks Like

Though he’s know primarily for films like Blue Citrus Hearts and his Dekkoo Original Series Feral, writer-director Morgan Jon Fox set out to make a difference with his 2011 documentary This is What Love in Action Looks Like.

When 16-year-old Zach Stark told his parents that he was gay, they panicked, believing that something was psychologically wrong with him. They soon sent him to “Love In Action,” a religious organization that promised to “cure” homosexuality.

Founded in 1973, Love in Action, now known as “Restoration Path” is the oldest and largest ex-gay organizations in the United States. They take the position that homosexuality is strictly behavioral and can be cured. Originally for adults, they began a program for teens, many of whom sent involuntarily.

Their draconian methods for sexual “redemption” prompted Fox, already a well-established indie filmmaker, to both become active in the ensuing protest against the group as well as document it all through interviews with several youths who had been in the program, the then current director of “Love in Action” (himself, a “former gay”) and the many young protesters who were compelled to mobilize against the organization.

An important look at gay youth, intolerance and skewed religious beliefs, This is What Love in Action Looks Like is available on Dekkoo. It’s one of our heralded Pride Picks.