Sex is back on the big screen. Here is our pick of the most exciting films of the season

Recently, in Jordan’s piece about sex on film, I read that the acclaimed director Miša Radivojević once said that sex scenes are difficult to write and even harder to shoot, adding the well observed point that the act is almost always portrayed in domestic cinema as rape or the unwilling torment of actors. Some things have fortunately changed drastically. Since 2018, thanks to the #MeToo movement, a completely new profession has emerged, one we now call the intimacy coordinator, whose task is to keep the set safe and to professionally choreograph scenes that involve everything from kissing and brief touching to nudity or any explicit content. And no, this does not diminish the authenticity of intimate scenes. On the contrary, some of the most striking ones, such as those in Normal People, I May Destroy You and Sex Education, were created under the guidance of the brilliant Ita O’Brien, with whom we spoke in the November issue of Vogue Adria.

Related: What really goes into sex on screen – and everything you ever wanted to know

Basic Instinct, Sex Crimes, Bound. The nineties were a golden age of erotic films. However, in March 2024, film producer Stephen Follows published a study revealing that since 2000, sexual content in films has dropped by nearly 40 percent, a result that aligns closely with more recent studies warning of a declining interest in sex among young people, especially Generation Z. Yet in recent months, the films everyone was talking about were filled with sex. The protagonist of the Oscar winning Anora is a sex worker, and showing her work is central to the story. Babygirl explores a woman confronting desires she considers shameful. Even Nosferatu, Robert Eggers’s remake of the classic vampire tale, is largely a film about passion. And do I even need to mention my favorite Guadagnino title, Challengers. In all of these films, sex carries a much deeper meaning. It aims to spark discussion rather than erotic excitement and to explore the complex power dynamics between characters.

Below, I highlight the films that brought sex back to the screen in the past period. Thank them for that.

Anora (2024)

The first half of Sean Baker’s Anora in many ways resembles a traditional romantic comedy. A mismatched pair, Ani, a sex worker played by Mikey Madison, and Ivan, the wealthy heir of a Russian oligarch played by Mark Eydelshteyn, meet and then impulsively get married. However, their sex scenes are far from romantic. Instead, they are played almost entirely for comedy. For example, the first time Ani goes to Ivan’s villa, the sex is literally transactional, he pays for it, and extremely quick.

Madison caused controversy when she said in an interview that she refused to shoot with an intimacy coordinator. She described their scenes more as sex shots than real sex, and that is shown faithfully on screen. The act lasts about ten seconds. Ivan climaxes prematurely, and Ani tries not to laugh. She is far more experienced, but that cannot compensate for the fact that Ivan’s wealth is the reason she is entirely dependent on him. At first she is not aware of this, but when reality becomes clear in the second half of the film and Ivan flees at the first sign of a threat from his parents, she realizes how little control she has over him.

A24

Babygirl (2024)

In a hotel room, a woman in a black dress and high heels crawls across the floor toward a visibly younger man sitting on the bed. You did not need to watch the film to know this scene. It went viral. When Romy, played by Nicole Kidman, and Samuel, played by Harris Dickinson, meet for the first time in Halina Reijn’s Babygirl, they have no idea what they are doing. Romy, a company executive, seems shocked that she even agreed to meet her young colleague, dressed up in a sheer top. Samuel is just as confused as he tries to deliver the dominance he correctly sensed Romy wanted. Nearly the entire scene is foreplay until the director focuses on Nicole lying on the floor as Samuel reaches under her skirt. The discussion surrounding the female orgasm lasted longer than the conversation about all male orgasms on film combined.

A24

Nosferatu (2024)

The grand finale of Robert Eggers’s film sparked debate as soon as it came out. Is it strangely romantic or brutally horrifying or something in between. As the plague begins to spread collective fear, Ellen, played by Lily Rose Depp, realizes that the only way to stop the terror unleashed by Count Orlok, played by Bill Skarsgard, is to sacrifice herself, which means keeping him with her until dawn. While her husband chases after the vampire believing he is hunting him, she puts on a wedding dress and welcomes Orlok into her room. She undresses and when he bites her breast, she appears to be in a state of ecstasy. As they lie dead in each other’s arms, surrounded by flowers, they seem less like villains and more like tragic lovers.

Focus Features

Challengers (2024)

The scene in which Tashi, Patrick and Art meet in a hotel room and begin kissing across one another clarified a lot for me in my own love triangle with two best friends. Who was secretly in love with whom. For her, sex is a game, just like the sport she excels in. Still, one of the criticisms of Challengers was that although the film was labeled provocative, which it certainly is in terms of theme, it does not contain many actual sex scenes. In fact, the only time it is clear that a sexual act occurs is when Tashi, played by Zendaya, hooks up with her ex, Patrick, played by Josh O’Connor, in his car the night before his match with her husband Art, once his best friend, played by Mike Faist. Even then, the most explicit moments happen off screen. One could argue that the lack of full sex scenes is intentional. The director saved the most intense erotic energy for the tennis court.

Amazon

Pillion (2025)

Some filmmakers use their early works to process youth experiences. Harry Lighton went the opposite route. With his first short films, he explored on screen what he had not yet had the courage to try in real life. On some level, I started making films because I wanted to explore my own sexuality, says the writer and director. In my early twenties I launched my sexuality through short films and then I would actually go and try these things myself. If he still makes films that way, his sex life is about to get interesting, judging by his feature debut, Pillion. Adapted from a novel by Adam Mars Jones, the film follows the bittersweet relationship that develops between Colin, played by Harry Melling, an inexperienced parking officer, and Ray, played by Alexander Skarsgard, a strong, dominant biker. Few would refuse the chance to wrestle someone who looks like Skarsgard, but Ray’s fetishes might put you off. They include turning Colin into a house servant and forcing him to sleep alone on the floor like an obedient dog. Colin, however, has a tendency toward loyalty and is eager to fulfill his duties, at least at first. One thing is certain. Pillion features some of the funniest, most bizarre and most desirable sex scenes in recent film history. And as in the best cinematic portrayals of sex, these physical scenes express not only the characters’ desires but their deeper needs.

A24

Saltburn (2023)

Directed by Emerald Fennell, Saltburn dives deep into the psychology of obsession and class through the story of Oliver Quick, played by Barry Keoghan, a student who becomes close to the charismatic and very privileged Felix Catton, played by Jacob Elordi. When Oliver becomes a guest in the Cattons’ lavish, almost surreal estate, his fascination with the family turns into something darker and harder to grasp. The film uses sex as a tool of power, manipulation and hidden vulnerability while slowly revealing how far we are willing to go to belong to a world that was never ours.

Prime Video

Queer (2024)

Desperation pours from every frame of the first sexual encounter between Lee, played by Daniel Craig, a junkie writer with an obvious vice problem, and Allerton, played by Drew Starkey, the young object of his fixation, in another film by Luca Guadagnino, loosely based on the autobiographical novella by William S. Burroughs. In 1950 in Mexico City, the distant Allerton, visiting Lee for the first time after a night of drinking, vomits into the toilet and then sits on the bed. In that drunken haze, he invites Lee to satisfy his hunger for him. Lee is greedy in his physical need, but Allerton looks at him with a mix of longing, pity and authority, and this is only the first of many imbalances that collide here. The film premiered in Venice in 2024, and the very fact that a former James Bond and sex symbol is at the center of a complex gay drama is already an important symbolic directorial gesture.

Yannis Drakoulidis

Wuthering Heights (2026)

Not much is known about the new visually untamed adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic. The trailer has only just been released, and what is clear is that Wuthering Heights is finally taking a form that does not shy away from the rawness, physicality and destructive magnetism that have always been at the heart of this story. Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff brings a quiet, suppressed brutality shaped by a life born of contempt, while Margot Robbie as Catherine plays a woman torn between social ambition and a desire that haunts her like a storm. The direction highlights the merciless nature of love and revenge as forces that cannot be tamed or broken apart.

Warner Bros