Visually dazzling, deliciously queer, and lovingly restored and remastered by the British Film Institute, Derek Jarman’s fictionalized look at the life of Baroque painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio is a gorgeous meditation on art and sexuality. With bold strokes of light and dark, capturing the contrast of beauty and violence, Jarman used the famed painter’s work as a visual blueprint for this filmic portrait — unconventional by biopic standards, but positively mainstream compared to the rest of Jarman’s oeuvre.

Told in nonlinear chapters with Jarman’s signature anachronistic style, Caravaggio depicts the artist (played by Nigel Terry as an adult and Dexter Fletcher as a youth) as a cultural rebel of 17th century Italy — fraternizing with male lovers, courtesans, and criminal outcasts while garnering painting commissions from the Church. Centering on a volatile, bisexual love triangle between Caravaggio and two of his models — a street fighter named Ranuccio (Sean Bean) and a prostitute named Lena (Tilda Swinton, in her feature film debut) — the film marked the first collaboration between the British auteur and his eternal muse Tilda Swinton.

One of the patron saints of 20th century queer cinema, Jarman has always been a key figure in the history of the Festival — with works by or specifically about him gracing Frameline screens in each of the five decades.