Film

Riot

Name: Riot
Genre: Drama, TV Movie
Released: 2018
Cast: Damon Herriman, Kate Box, Xavier Samuel, Jessica De Gouw, Josh Quong Tart

Other titles called Riot: the 1969 film, the 2015 film.

Drama

Riot follows Lance Gowland, a gay activist navigating Australia's 1970s liberation movement while managing work, family and his own identity. It's a earnest, intimate drama that finds the personal stakes within historical struggle—less about grand gestures than the quiet cost of visibility and the messy work of change.

TMDb rating

3.2

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you want a grounded period drama where the activist fight and the private closet pull against each other, and you like watching one stubborn man work through it at his own pace.

Skip it if you need brisk plotting or a clear arc, since this is a quiet study of one life that moves at the speed of its daily grind.

What it asks of you: Settle in for a feature-length stretch of 105 minutes, where patience matters more than momentum and the emotional weight builds in small, unhurried scenes.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Milk2008

Sean Penn's Harvey Milk fights for visibility in 1970s San Francisco with the same blend of idealism and pragmatism. It captures the electric danger of being publicly queer when that was genuinely radical.

But It's a conventional biopic that hits expected beats; some scenes feel staged for inspiration rather than lived.

Prayers for Bobby2009

Ryan Kelley plays a young man wrestling with faith and sexuality while his mother comes to terms with having a gay son. Raw and devastating about how personal the political becomes.

But It's a TV movie that sometimes leans into sentimentality. The ending reshapes real tragedy for emotional catharsis.

Dawson City: Frozen Time2017

A documentary excavating lost 1920s films buried in permafrost. Like Riot, it's about how queer and marginal histories get buried, and what resurrection costs.

But It's oblique and associative rather than narrative. If you want story momentum, this will feel slow and digressive.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Riot

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Naked Civil Servant1975

Both refuse the sanitised version of queer history. They're about the cost of visibility when conformity was the safer path, showing how personal defiance becomes political act.

John Hurt as Quentin Crisp in 1970s London, a man who refused to hide his queerness when hiding was the price of survival. Made the same year as Riot's setting, it has that unflinching generational witness.

But It's a 1970s TV production—technically dated, paced like a play, and Crisp's persona is provocative in ways some find affected rather than brave.

Maurice1987

James Wilby and Hugh Grant in Merchant-Ivory's only happy queer love story—set in Edwardian Cambridge, it's about finding courage to claim your life when the world says you mustn't.

But It's languid and aristocratic; the class context feels remote. Some find it precious rather than moving.

Pride2014

British miners and London gays form an alliance during the 1984 strike. It's political activism as chosen family, funny and furious and genuinely about solidarity across difference.

But It softens real conflict and hardship for crowd-pleasing sentiment. The political complexity gets flattened sometimes.

The Children's Hour1961

Two teachers' friendship is destroyed by a student's lie about them being lovers. Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine navigate the suffocating cruelty of accusation with devastating restraint.

But It's coded and oblique about homosexuality itself; if you want explicitness, the indirection may frustrate.

Tangerine2015

Shot on an iPhone, it follows trans sex workers in Los Angeles over 24 hours. Energetic, funny, angry—queer life as it's actually lived, without apology or inspiration porn.

But It's visually rough and narratively loose. The handheld aesthetic and fast cutting won't appeal to everyone.

Weekend2011

Two men meet at a gay bar and spend a charged, uncertain weekend together in Nottingham. It's about what happens between people when the world hasn't given you a script.

But It's deliberately unglamorous and unresolved; people often want more dramatic closure than this offers.

Cléo from 5 to 71962

Both are about interior lives during exterior crisis. Lance navigates who he is amid social upheaval; Cléo navigates mortality. Each finds the drama in how people *endure* rather than in what *happens*.

Agnès Varda follows a woman through Paris for 90 minutes as she waits for medical results. It's about time, mortality, being seen—how differently the world looks when you're suddenly vulnerable and aware of it.

But Nothing much happens. If you need plot, this is a mood in cinema form. It requires patience and presence.