Arshad always knew he was different. Soon after emigrating from Pakistan to Canada with his family, Arshad realized he was gay. Merging clips from Bollywood films, animation, and home movies that capture awkward teen phases as well as significant life revelations, Arshad narrates his own cathartic journey, alongside his entire family’s. With charming lyricism and a dash of good humor, director Arshad Khan shares a deeply personal story of self-discovery and familial reconciliation, as he explores the challenges that can threaten the bonds between children and their parents. ABU is an intimately open and dazzling visual memoir about the complex dynamic the filmmaker has with his father, who was at once extremely modern and also rigidly traditional and unaccepting of his son’s true self.

In Paris in the early 1990s, a group of activists goes to battle for those stricken with HIV/AIDS, taking on sluggish government agencies and major pharmaceutical companies in bold, invasive actions. The organization is ACT UP, and its members, many of them gay and HIV-positive, embrace their mission with a literal life-or-death urgency. Amid rallies, protests, fierce debates and ecstatic dance parties, the newcomer Nathan (Valois) falls in love with Sean (Biscayart), the group’s radical firebrand, and their passion sparks against the shadow of mortality as the activists fight for a breakthrough. Simultaneously a period-piece, a heartbreaking love story, a medical drama, and an activist procedural, BPM is one of the most emotionally gripping films of the year. Undeniably powerful in its ability to connect with the viewer on multiple levels, Campillo doesn’t shy away from the messy details of life, sex, death, or parliamentary procedure but he marries the bad times to transcendent moments of cinematic bliss.