10 Best British Movies Of 2017

2017 has been the best year in recent memory for LGBT cinema, from Moonlight's triumphant Oscar victory to the current awards season buzz surrounding the seductive summer romance of Call Me By Your Name. Lurking somewhere in the middle of those two releases, though, was Britain's answer to the new queer cinema wave – God's Own Country.

The film introduces us to Josh O'Connor as an angry, withdrawn young man working on his father's Yorkshire farm. He has meaningless, passion-free sexual encounters with men he meets and never speaks to again. This changes when a sweater-wearing immigrant, played by Alec Secareanu, is employed to assist him and there's immediately a spark between the two of them.

Writer-director Francis Lee works hard to make the relationship both passionate and believable, with prejudice around immigration foregrounded, while homophobia is a mere lurking worry. It's a movie about isolated characters and how a relationship can feel simple in the moment, while hiding complexity in the wider world. This is a British love story for the ages.