A stark, sensual rural romance with bruising emotional honesty and a deeply felt sense of place. It pairs harsh working-class realism with unexpected tenderness, making the love story feel hard-won and memorable.
God's Own Country
Where to watch: Buy
Movie · Romance · Drama
Thu · 1h 44m
Director: Francis Lee
Starring: Josh O'Connor, Alec Secăreanu, Gemma Jones
Overview
A young farmer in rural Yorkshire numbs his daily frustrations with binge drinking and casual sex, until the arrival of a Romanian migrant worker.
Director
Francis Lee
Cast
Josh O'Connor, Alec Secăreanu, Gemma Jones
Curator Review
Verdict
A stark, sensual rural romance with bruising emotional honesty and a deeply felt sense of place. It pairs harsh working-class realism with unexpected tenderness, making the love story feel hard-won and memorable.
Best for
viewers who like intimate queer dramas
fans of bleak-to-hopeful character studies
people drawn to rural settings and naturalistic filmmaking
audiences who appreciate restrained but emotionally intense romance
Skip if
you want a light or feel-good romance
you dislike explicit sex and rough language
you prefer fast-paced plotting over mood and character
you need a broadly accessible, low-conflict love story
Overview
God's Own Country is one of those rare romances that feels earned in every glance, gesture, and silence. Francis Lee roots the film in the physical labor, weather, and isolation of Yorkshire, so the emotional breakthrough lands with real force rather than melodrama.
Worth noting
Josh O'Connor gives Johnny a raw, defensive volatility that slowly softens without ever becoming sentimental, while Alec Secăreanu brings a calm, grounded warmth that changes the film's temperature. Their chemistry is tactile and believable, and the movie understands desire as something messy, practical, and transformative.
Bottom line
What lingers most is the film's tenderness amid hardship: the lambing, the mud, the drinking, the family strain, the small acts of care. It can be harsh, but it is never cruel for its own sake, and by the end it has become a quietly moving story about learning how to be held and how to hold someone else.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Ellie ✨ (4.5★) · 8802 likes
it's not gay cinéma unless one of them forms an overly sentimental attachment to an item of the other's clothing
Jenni (4★) · 8169 likes
[me, bawling my eyes out]: i have no idea what they are saying
Lucy (4★) · 7105 likes
honestly we’ve hit the point in film where the tenderness and longing and understanding expressed in almost any movie between lgbt characters is simply so much more profound than most straight romances in film history
sree (4★) · 5453 likes
when bae calls you a slur 🥺💖
doinkdedoink (5★) · 4895 likes
we love gheorghe, a sweater-wearing, animal-loving, cheese-making, ewe-mothering, nature-loving, warm-hearted human being, who brings a smile to johnny's face and makes pasta for him. get yourself a gheorghe
Themes
queer romance, rural isolation, working-class life, emotional repression, migration and belonging, family obligation, masculinity, care and tenderness