India, June 30 -- Queer stories always exist in liminal spaces, rarely fitting into the moulds created by mainstream art. On the last day of Pride Month, it's worth looking beyond the rainbow-tinted filters of performative visibility to celebrate films that don't rely on weepy arcs or tokenism. These three independent short films push the conversation further by exploring themes that are often overlooked in today's hyper-real Bollywood: queer rage, tender loneliness and the solitude of longing.

When asked why they make films, director and poet Anureet Watta's response was precise, as if it had been thought of a thousand times before. "I could not find representation in the films I watched," they explain, "but I knew that if the world did...