Prime Video’s 25 Best Movies With Lesbian or Bisexual Women Characters

Like the retail website from which Prime Video sprung, Prime Video’s library of films featuring lesbian and bisexual characters is massive, incoherent, and very difficult to ascertain from a casual browse. Luckily, we are here to inform you of the best lesbian and bisexual movies currently available on Prime Video. Prime Video specifically seems to be a home for a lot of (at least 25) super low-budget lesbian films you’ve never heard of, most of which are pretty bad, but if you love Ambrosia or Anatomy of a Love Seen or Heterosexual Jill, I am happy for you although they will not be included here!


A Simple Favor

Year: 2018
Runtime: 1h 56m
Director: Paul Feig
Read the Autostraddle Review of A Simple Favor

A twisty, sexy domestic thriller starring Blake Lively as Emily, an enchanting PR director who goes missing shortly after befriending widowed mommy vlogger Stephanie (Anna Kendrick), sending Stephanie on a hunt that eventually threatens her family and enlarges her fan base. Along the way, she meets Emily’s thwarted ex Diana (Linda Cardellini). Patti Harison and Kelly McCormack also star.


Appropriate Behavior

Year: 2014
Runtime: 1h 26m
Director: Desiree Akhavan
#9 on our Best Lesbian Movies of All Time List

desiree sitting pondering life and choices

Shirin is knee-deep in bisexual chaos after a breakup with the woman she thought she’d spend the rest of her life with. “Writer/director/star Desiree Akhavan is a once-in-a-generation talent and her humor makes this an easy movie to watch even as Shirin is seeped in melancholy and crisis,” writes Drew.


Addicted to Fresno 

Year: 2015
Runtime: 1h 25m
Director: Jamie Babbitt
available on freevee with ads

Natasha Lyonne plays a lesbian, as usual, in the dark comedy Addicted to Fresno, which also stars Aubrey Plaza and Judy Greer. Shannon (Greer) and Martha (Lyonne) are codependent sisters in a cycle of Martha picking up the pieces for Shannon, the recovering sex addict.


AWOL

Year: 2017
Runtime: 1h 22m
Director: Deb Shoval
available on freevee with ads
Read the Autostraddle Review of AWOL

two girls lying down looking at each other

“Talking about class can be ugly,” wrote Sarah Fonseca in her glowing review of AWOL, a love story set in a rarely-portrayed rural landscape and confronts new conversations issues of class, race and gender. “Yet as AWOL asserts, when you dare to comment, sometimes it frees up room for beauty to unfurl.”


Becks 

Year: 2018
Runtime: 1h 33m
Director: Elizabeth Rohrbaugh & Daniel Powell

Lesbian musician Becks moves from Los Angeles back to her hometown of St. Louis to live with her religious homophobic mother after she catches her girlfriend, Lucy (Hailey Kiyoko) cheating on her. Soon she meets and begins bonding with a bored housewife (Mena Suavari) whose husband went to high school with Becks and I bet you can guess what happens next!


Better Than Chocolate

Year: 1999
Runtime: 1h 38m
Director: Anne Wheeler
available on freevee with ads

A film that inspires very mixed opinions from lesbian audiences, in the ’90s it definitely won over the hearts of many community members with its story of a lesbian friend group in Vancouver looking for love and fighting homophobic censorship and its impact on their gay bookstore. Also, there is a sex scene where Maggie and Kim paint each other’s bodies to make art and love. In 2019, Drew wrote that “Better Than Chocolate remains the only piece of media that portrays a trans woman as a member of a lesbian friend group” and described it as “silly and fun, especially when you’re accompanied by a group of friends and a bottle of wine.”


Birds of Paradise

Amazon Original Movie
Year: 2021
Runtime: 1h 53m
Director: Sarah Adina Smith

“Birds of Paradise is a fine little lesbian diversion for a moody day,” writes Heather of this psychological thriller set at an exclusive ballet academy in Paris, where two top American dancers — a scholarship kid and an ambassador’s daughter — develop one of those tortured homoerotic adolescent bonds that in fact eventually becomes sexual. It’s campy without knowing how campy it is but otherwise is exactly what you might expect from such a film.


Blush

Year: 2015
Runtime: 1h 24m
Director: Michal Vinik
available on freevee with ads

“This Israeli coming-of-age film draws parallels between protagonist Naama’s burgeoning sexuality and her country’s troublesome politics,” wrote Drew in our Encyclopedia of Cinema. “While she’s having the usual queer teen experiences of first love, first heartbreak, and first post-heartbreak head shave, she’s also forced to deal with her violent home life and racist father. It’s a tale of intolerance across identities that’s affecting even as it follows familiar beats.”


Bottoms

Year: 2023
Runtime: 1 hr 30 minutes
Director: Emma Seligman

Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri look at each other in a classroom as their peers have various shenanigans behind them

This instant lesbian classic follows two horny teenagers, PJ (Rachel Sennot) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri), who start a fight club at their high school with the goal of getting laid. Kayla writes: “With a score co-composed by Charli XCX, a bold color palette, and more than one actual bomb, Bottoms is a boisterous and biting teen comedy that’s very on-the-nose and over-the-top about high school being a violent hellscape of social hierarchies and skin-tingling horniness.”


Boy Meets Girl

Year: 2014
Runtime: 1h 39m
Director: Eric Schaeffer

21-year-old bisexual trans woman Ricky is a Kentucky barista dreaming of studying fashion in New York. She spends all her time hanging out with her since-childhood best friend Robby. Her life takes a turn when a friendship with new friend Francesca blossoms into an affair. Mari called it “heartwarming” and “groundbreaking.”


The Carmilla Movie

Year: 2017
Runtime: 1h 34m
Director: Spencer Maybee

The cast of the Carmilla Move struts down a path in the forest

Karly declared the film, inspired by the popular lesbian vampire webseries, “everything I’ve ever wished for a movie adaptation of a beloved series.” Queer actors Elise Bauman and Natasha Negovanlis play Laura and Camilla, enlisting the help of their friends to uncover a supernatural threat with connections to Carmilla’s past.


Chutney Popcorn

Year: 2000
Runtime: 1h 31m
Director: Nisha Ganatra

Starring Nisha Ganatra as young lesbian Indian-American Reena and Jill Hennessey as her girlfriend, Drew writes that this funny, sweet, character-rich tale “shows the intimacy and conflict within biological and chosen family structures, searching for new ideas around parenthood.”


Cloudburst

Year: 2013
Runtime: 1h 33m
Director: Thom Fitzgerald

Lesbian couple Dotty (Brenda Fricker) and Stella (Olympia Dukakis) break free from their nursing home and venture out on a road trip to Canada where they intend to tie the knot. in her review, Vanessa noted that it was fantastic to “see a true honest story about two old women in a real relationship with feelings and nuance and layers and depth.”


Frida

Year: 2024
Runtime: 1 hr 27 minutes
Director: Carla Gutiérrez

This “intimately raw and magical journey” through the “life, mind, and heart” of iconic bisexual artist Frida Kahlo is told through her own words, via diaries, letters, essays and interviews, visualized through animation inspired by her artwork. “Gutierrez doesn’t shy away from her queerness — with sexuality or gender —” wrote Drew of the documentary, “nor does she reduce her communism to a brief mention. A lot of time is also spent on the accident that caused her to live with chronic pain. It’s not framed as inspirational or depressing — it just is. Every aspect of Kahlo’s life and worldview and art was shaped by being a queer disabled communist.”


The Handmaiden

Year: 2016
Runtime: 2h 25m
Director: Park Chan-wook
#11 on our list of the Best Lesbian Movies of All Time

The women of The Handmaiden stand in the rain

This intricate, seductive South Korean psychological thriller, inspired by Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith, is set in 1930s Korea and tells the story of Sook-hee (Kim Tae-ri), a con artist who cons her way into getting hired as a handmaiden to a wealthy Japanese heiress Hideko (Kim Min-hee) who lives in an isolated estate with her uncle, a collector of graphic erotica. But when they fall in love, the con is in peril.


The Feels

Year: 2018
Runtime: 1h 27m
Director: Jenée LaMarque

Andi (Constance Wu) and Lu (Angela Trimbur) go into the woods of California wine country for a pre-wedding co-bachelorette party, where an unexpected confession throws a wrench in the weekend: Lu drunkenly reveals that she’s never had an orgasm. Everybody wants to help, and the conversations snowball from there. “Lesbian mumblecore is practically its own genre at this point,” wrote Heather in her review. “With its boundary-less relationships, improvised dialogue, characters who remind you of your own friends, and those stifled hiccups that give way to just enough drama to make the happy ending rewarding.”


Loving Annabelle

Year: 2006
Runtime: 1h 16m
Director: Katherine Brooks

Rebellious 17-year-old lesbian Annabelle Tillman (Erin Kellyman) is sent to a Catholic boarding school where she finds comfort, inspiration and eventually a clandestine inappropriate homosexual affair with her poetry teacher, Simone (Diane Gaidry). This tale as old as lesbian fictional time was inspired by Mädchen in Uniform.


The Miseducation of Cameron Post

Year: 2006
Runtime: 1h 16m
Director: Katherine Brooks
#21 on Our Best Lesbian Movie of All Time List
available on freevee with ads

“The best adaptations capture the essence of their source material with a new set of tools,” wrote Drew of The Miseducation of Cameron Post. “That’s exactly what Desiree Akhavan’s movie of Emily M. Danforth’s contemporary classic accomplishes. Chloë Grace Moretz playa Cameron as “dykey and angsty and headstrong with that depth of vulnerability always peaking through” in this coming-of-age story that follows our heroine to gay conversion camp in the mid-90s.


Monster

Year: 2004
Runtime: 1h 48m
Director: Patty Jenkins

A heartbreaking, brutal drama based on the true story of lesbian sex worker Aileen Wournos, who’d suffered a lifetime of abuse and neglect and as an adult, began killing and robbing her clients before eventually earning the moniker of “America’s first female serial killer.” Charlize Theron plays Aileen Wuornos and Christina Ricci plays her lover Selby. 


Professor Marston & the Wonder Women

Year: 2017
Runtime: 1h 48m
Director: Angela Robinson
#16 on our best Lesbian Movies List

A man watches on as one woman holds onto a rope that's tied around a younger woman who is dressed like Wonder Woman.

This very sexy and very fun Angela Robinson film tells the story of Harvard psychologist and inventor Dr. William Moulton Marston and his wife, Elizabeth, who together created the Wonder Women character. William hires his student, Olive, as a research assistant, and she becomes part of William and Elizabeth’s relationship. There’s a lot of rope play in this one.


Reaching for the Moon

Year: 2013
Runtime: 1h 54m
Director: Bruno Barreto

Set in Petrópolis between the years 1951 and 1967, Reaching the Moon tells the story of the love affair between the American poet Elizabeth Bishop and the Brazilian architect Lota de Macedo Soares. “Reaching for the Moon illustrates how creativity and power and passion shape the world through two character’s imagination and strength,” wrote Hansen in her review.


Seventeen/Siebzhen 

Year: 2017
Runtime: 1h 45m
Director: Monja Art

17-year-old high school student Paula is really into her classmate Charlotte, but Charlotte has a boyfriend, and then there is popular girl Lily, an antagonist of Paula who might actually have a thing for Paula. Also, Charlotte has a boyfriend and then Paula gets a boyfriend ’cause she just wants to be liked. It captures the endless pining and yearning inherent in struggling with your sexuality as a teenager and all the awkward moments that engenders.


Signature Move

Year: 2021
Runtime: 1h 11m
Director: Fawzia Mirza

This late-in-life coming-of-age movie finds a Pakistani-American woman obsessed with Lucha-style Mexican wrestling as an emotional release from her tense relationship with her newly widowed mother. “Fawzia Mirza stars and co-wrote the script,” writes Drew, “and her natural likeability, impeccable comic timing, and chemistry with Sari Sanchez make this movie endlessly endearing. It’s part romcom, part family dramedy, and both threads feel nuanced and real.”


Somebody That I Used to Know

Year: 2023
Runtime: 1h 46m
Director: Dave Franco
Amazon Original Movie

This audacious rom-com about a TV producer who returns home after her show’s cancellation and reconnects with Sean, an old flame who’s already engaged to someone else is pretty mediocre! But, a highlight is Kiersey Clemons, Sean’s “20-something biracial bisexual fiancé who is the lead singer of a punk rock band” who Nic described as “sexy, confident and passionate about her craft.” It’s a light watch that offers welcome representation of an out bisexual woman with a queer friend group who has decided to marry a cis man.


Something From Tiffany’s 

Year: 2022
Runtime: 1h 27m
Director: Daryl Wein
Amazon Original Movie

Javicia Leslie and Jojo Gibbs stand together with their arms around each other on the set of Something From Tiffany's

This isn’t a lesbian movie by any stretch of the imagination — but it is one of a handful of straight Christmas movies that actually contains a solid lesbian side-plot. This rom-com, starring queer actress Shay Mitchell and the beloved Zoey Deutch, asks the age-old question, “what if two men were at Tiffany’s at the same time and their packages got mixed up and the wrong man went home with an engagement ring?” Zoey’s character owns a bakery with her best friend, Terri, a lesbian played by Twenties‘ Jojo T. Gibbs. We also are gifted with a few brief glimpses into Terri’s marriage with Sophia (Batwoman‘s Javica Leslie) and well, honestly, the movie is pretty okay!


Sunshine Cleaning

Year: 2009
Runtime: 1h 31m
Director: Christine Jeffs
available on freevee with ads

This comedy-drama follows 30-something single Mom Rose (Amy Adams) and her queer underachieving sister Norah (Emily Blunt) as they embark upon the industry of crime scene cleanup. Norah experiences a little subplot of her own involving the daughter of a woman who died in one of the houses she cleaned.


Tell It To The Bees 

Year: 2019
Runtime: 1h 48m
Director: Annabel Jankel
available on freevee with ads

In 1952 Scotland, Lydia (Holiday Grainger) is struggling to raise her young son after her husband leaves her — and meets new-in-town doctor Jean Markham (Anna Paquin), a passionate beekeeper, when he’s injured in a fight at school. Their attraction is exciting but forbidden in the small, conservative town where they live.


Tru Love

Year: 2013
Runtime: 1h 27m
Director: Shauna MacDonald & Kate Johnston

A Candian film about 37-year-old “serial bed hopping lesbian” Tru who is bounding aimlessly through life when she meets Alice, a 60-year-old widow visiting Tru’s friend, her busy lawyer daughter, Suzanne. Sparks fly! There are complications with Suzanne! I watched this entire film and retained not one moment of it, because in my opinion it was kind of bad. But others really like it, so!

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Riese

Riese is the 43-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish and has a cute dog named Carol. Follow her on twitter and instagram.

Riese has written 3267 articles for us.

3 Comments

  1. Oh, Better Than Chocolate. A queer delight, I just loved this movie growing up as it was one of the first films, along with Bound, that I ever saw after I’d come out. It will always hold a special place in my heart and now I need to go and find it again. Thrilled to see it included in a list, finally, as I don’t recall seeing it mentioned here more than once or twice in past lists.

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