I went to the cinema twice last week. Both times I went based on the strength of the two main actresses and had no clue about the plot of either film.

The first film was On Swift Horses that looked like a rom-com starring Daisy Edgar-Jones (the reason I went to see it), Will Poulter, and Jacob Elordi. It ended up being a frankly quite sad film about two main queer characters during 1950s America where they have no rights. It was a story about risk and used gambling, whether that was on dog races or poker, as a metaphor for living your life as an out and proud gay person when public opinion and (crucially) the law isn’t on your side.

I’m not sure it quite hit the emotional highs that it wanted to hit but I was very pleasantly surprised to watch Daisy Edgar-Jones take part in several liaisons with other women during her marriage to sweet Will Poulter and also to see Jacob Elordi’s passionate love affair with the character of Henry.

The second film I impulsively watched at the cinema was Honey Don’t, a film by Ethan Coen and (I believe) his wife, Tricia Cooke about Margaret Qualley as a private investigator looking into the events around the death of a potential client. I absolutely was not expecting that Margaret Qualley is a badass lesbian in this film who turns down a man by telling him ‘I like girls’ over and over (and also has sex with Aubrey Plaza!).

I felt like Honey Don’t was a bit all over the place in terms of the storyline with plot threads left open and unresolved, it was a bit of a mess just in general. But with both films it just felt incredibly refreshing for that representation to be there. I left the cinema both times thinking … I want and need more queer friends in my life. I want to be more involved in this community. I want to feel like I belong in these spaces.

And I guess it just reminds me that we deserve to be represented in films, our stories deserve to be told. Whether that’s irreverent or poignant. We need all the stories.