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Pendle Sportswear, which has supplied kits for new independent film Realness with a Twist, has revealed a ranking of the best LGBTQ+ positive sports movies based on ratings taken from IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes.
The research analysed films of the genre that have been released in the last five decades, finding that pictures made in the 2000s and 2010s dominated the top 10.
Here are the most popular LGBTQ+ sports films, according to audiences.
10. Broken Hearts Club (2000)
The American romantic comedy-drama follows the lives of a group of gay friends in West California, in particular a restaurant owner and the softball team he sponsors. The movie received positive reviews at the time of its release for portraying homosexuality as normal and its characters as average gay men.
9. Like A Virgin (2006)
Like a Virgin is a South Korean comedy-drama film where a man enters a wrestling competition in order to fund a sex change operation. The picture won several domestic awards and was nominated for the Asia Pacific Screen Award in the Best Performance by an Actor category.
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8. My Last Round (2011)
The Chilean-Argentinian drama focuses on a love story between a boxer and a kitchen assistant, who set out on a journey to the capital city to pursue their dreams. While the film only scored 6.7 on IMDB, its Rotten Tomatoes score was a much more respectable 80%.
7. Shelter (2007)
Shelter follows a surfer who finds comfort in the arms of his best friend’s older brother when he returns from LA for a few weeks. The film has the highest rating on IMDB (7.6) of any film on our list but is let down by its relatively low Rotten Tomatoes score of 60%.
6. The Pass (2016)
Telling the story of a relationship between two English footballers over the course of a decade, the film was nominated for a BAFTA for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer. The Pass also boasts the second-highest Rotten Tomatoes score of any film on the list with an impressive 89%.
5. Battle Of The Sexes (2017)
The tennis biopic stars Emma Stone and Steve Carell as Billie Jean-King and Bobby Riggs, chronicling the lead-up to their historic exhibition match in 1973. The film was a critical success despite not making the budget back from box-office sales for tackling the issues facing members of the LGBTQ+ community in the 70s.
4. Bend It Like Beckham (2002)
The classic British football film follows two ambitious teenagers who are set on pursuing a career in football despite that going against their parent’s wishes. It went on to make over £58m at the box office worldwide, making it the highest-grossing football film of all time.
Bend It Like Beckham grabs the limelight thanks to namechecking modern day football’s biggest star David Beckham. But it isn’t some vacuous self-satisfied ego at work here.
Indeed, Golden Balls’ philanthropic qualities come glowingly to life in this feelgood film about a football mad British-Asian girl joining a female football team against her culturally strict parents’ better wishes.
This sweet-natured comedy-drama mixes a number of themes – cultural identity, sexual and gender liberation, friendship and growing up – into a pleasing and entertaining end product. It’s also arguably director Gurinder Chadha’s best film.
3. Beautiful Boxer (2003)
The biographical film tells the life story of Parinya Charoenphol a famous transgender Thai boxing fighter and later, actress and model. It fascinatingly chronicles the details as Parinya takes up the sport to pay for the sex change and unnerves opponents by performing a make-up application ritual before each fight.
2. Handsome Devil (2016)
Irish comedy-drama Handsome Devil focuses on the unlikely friendship between boarding school roommates, one of which is the star player at the Rugby obsessed school. The film features themes of homosexuality while simultaneously examining hypocrisy and snobbery within the private school system.
1. Mario (2018)
The Swiss film follows two footballers who meet while playing against each other, with feelings between them quickly developing. “A committed central performance and a controversial subject…mostly left unexplored in cinema, as it is in life, are the two main reasons to see this earnest melodrama,” writes Kevin Maher in the UK Times.
Cath Clarke wrote in The Guardian that Mario is “a heartfelt and human drama with the texture of truth and characters to care about.” Boasting a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes and 7.4/10 on IMDB, Mario tops the list.
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