Film

Pride

Name: Pride
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Released: 2014
Cast: George MacKay, Ben Schnetzer, Freddie Fox, Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton

Pride is that rare political film built entirely on warmth rather than outrage. Real story, 1984: London's LGBT activists adopt a Welsh mining village nobody else will touch, and slowly turn town-hall suspicion into full-throated solidarity. Funny, unashamedly sentimental, and stacked with a note-perfect ensemble — Nighy, Staunton, MacKay — who make protest feel like community. Watch it for the joy it finds inside a fight that shouldn't have been this hard.

TMDb rating

7.7

If you liked this

Billy Elliot2000

Same coalfield, same strike, same year of picket lines and police vans — but seen through a boy who wants to dance instead of fight. It's Pride's mirror image: one family instead of a movement, grief instead of triumph.

But It's a much lonelier, sadder film than Pride, and the dance-triumph ending can feel like a plaster over a deep wound.

Brassed Off1996

Another Yorkshire pit town, another act of collective defiance dressed up as something else — here, a colliery brass band fighting to survive as the mines close around it. Bitter, funny, and quietly devastating in equal measure.

But The comedy curdles hard in the final act; it's angrier and less hopeful than Pride ever lets itself be.

Made in Dagenham2010

Working-class women, a union that doesn't want them, and a fight that changes the law — the same feel-good-activism engine as Pride, right down to the sing-along solidarity and the unlikely alliance across class lines.

But It smooths its real history into something a little too tidy and rousing; expect crowd-pleaser, not complexity.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Victim1961

This is the fear underneath Pride's joy: the actual criminalised, blackmail-shadowed Britain the miners' strike generation had only just crawled out of. Watching it makes the comedy in Pride feel hard-won rather than easy.

Dirk Bogarde plays a closeted barrister targeted by blackmailers in the first mainstream British film to say the word 'homosexual' aloud. Made when the law Pride's activists were still fighting was fully in force.

But It's stiff, stagey, and moves at a 1961 pace — a document more than a piece of entertainment.

Milk2008

The American cousin to Mark Ashton's story — a gay activist who understood that visibility and coalition-building were the whole point. Sean Penn is extraordinary, and the politics of the era are laid out with real clarity.

But It's a biopic in the classic mode, more solemn and less funny than Pride, and you'll likely know how it ends.

The Full Monty1997

Sheffield steelworkers, mass unemployment, and dignity reclaimed through the most unlikely means possible. Same warm, working-class comic register as Pride, and just as sneakily moving underneath the jokes.

But It has nothing to do with LGBT politics specifically, so the connection is tonal and economic rather than thematic.

Philadelphia1993

A courtroom drama that forced mainstream American audiences to look at AIDS and homophobia at exactly the moment Pride's activists were fighting similar battles across the ocean. Tom Hanks is quietly remarkable.

But It's earnest and message-driven in a way that now feels dated; it explains prejudice more than it dramatises it.

Kinky Boots2005

A struggling shoe factory and a drag performer save each other in an unlikely partnership that echoes Pride's central joke: the people you'd never expect to need each other, need each other most.

But It's broader and more predictable, closer to a feel-good crowd-pleaser than a serious history lesson.

The Iron Lady2011

Meryl Streep as the woman whose government is the unnamed villain hovering over every scene in Pride. Useful, uncomfortable context for just how much was stacked against the miners and their unlikely allies.

But It's a character study, not a strike drama, and stays frustratingly sympathetic to its subject throughout.

The Angels' Share2012no page yet

Ken Loach's gentler, funnier side: working-class Scots, petty crime, and community rescuing one of its own. Shares Pride's belief that solidarity can be both a joke and a lifeline.

But The connection to Pride's politics is loose — this is about redemption more than protest.

Paris Is Burning1991

Different continent, different decade, same engine: a marginalised community building solidarity and joy where the wider world offers only contempt. Pride's LGSM found a mining village; this scene built its own family from scratch.

A documentary about New York's Black and Latino ball culture, where chosen families walk categories and invent language that's since eaten the mainstream whole. Funny, tender, and heartbreaking in ways trailers don't prepare you for.

But There's no plot to hold onto — it's observational documentary, and its subjects' fates outside the frame are often grim.

BPM (Beats per Minute)2017

This is what Mark Ashton's activism became a decade on: the same coalition-building, the same 'nobody's coming to save us but us' logic, aimed at a crisis with a much higher body count.

French, urgent, and set inside Paris's ACT UP chapter fighting for AIDS treatment and dignity in the early 90s. It has Pride's meeting-room democracy and chanting solidarity, but with mortality pressing in on every scene.

But It's far heavier and more graphic than Pride — grief and rage sit at the centre, not comic relief.