Luca longs for his lost love; Thalles for a name change; Raul to be a better person. They all share one element: they were born as women.
Social & External
The people behind it
Luca Scarpelli
Raul Capistrano
Thalles Rocha
The Alexander Ball is an observational documentary extravaganza celebrating Samoan-Māori-Australian trans woman of colour, Ella Ganza, and the Meanjin (Brisbane) ballroom scene, as she and her ballroom family prepare for one of the biggest pride events of the year: The Alexander Ball.
In this intimate portrait addressed directly to Hélène Hazera, filmmaker Judith Abitbol revisits a key figure of France’s countercultures from the late 1960s to the 1990s. A member of the Gazolines and the FHAR (Homosexual Front for Revolutionary Action), Hazera was a tireless LGBTQ activist who founded Act Up’s Trans and AIDS commissions—one of her proudest achievements. Her true victory, however, was becoming the first transgender journalist at a major national newspaper (Libération), and later a producer at Radio France and France TV. Through her story, Abitbol reconnects with the insurrectionary spirit and creative chaos of those decades—an era when French culture was shaken by radical imagination, humor, and defiance. The film celebrates these modern Antigones who dared to live their desires beyond the reach of any law.
The interconnection between the philosophical film body and the trans human body is explored through the film’s materiality and the use of analogue techniques. In a deeply personal investigation, parallels are drawn between the procedures both bodies must undertake to reach their final form.
Trans and queer communities shaped carnival traditions in the Canary Islands, exploring their historical role in developing costumes, performances, and celebrations that define the region's festive identity.
A snowy landscape flowing outside the Shinkansen window. Miyu is heading to Nagoya to undergo her long-time dream of gender reassignment surgery. Miyu is a third-year student in the fashion design department. When she graduated, she aspired to go out into society as a woman both physically and mentally. Her dream will come true soon. A cafe bar in Kobe half a year ago. She is still chatting with her friends today. Her junior, Nao, and Mimu, who attends another university, are both transgender. “After all, love ends in sex, right? But we can’t have sex…
“It ain’t easy…being green” is the favorite expression of Stormé DeLarverie, a woman whose life flouted prescriptions of gender and race. During the 1950s and '60s she toured the black theater circuit as a mistress of ceremonies and the sole male impersonator of the legendary Jewel Box Revue, America’s first integrated female impersonation show and forerunner of La Cage aux Folles.
Two legends contested their identities as women in the court of public opinion: April Ashley, who was immortalized as a trailblazer by embracing her transgender history; and Amanda Lear, who has consciously denied and obfuscated her history for decades. Their divergent paths reveal disparate but intertwined legacies.
The brutal and often poignant story of a boy trapped in the body of a girl. It takes us on the journey of a typical Afrikaans child who faces self-hate, societal rejection, doubt and ultimately healing. A story about a transgender child fighting to find their place in the world.
Ary Zara lives in limbo trying to understand who he really is. Refusing the gender binary categories that society imposes, at the age of 28 he decides to explore his identity by facing a physical and emotional transformation. A three-year journey revealing what is on the other side of the mirror through the courage, doubt and freedom of a deeply intimate process of self-discovery.
Caught between societal expectations and family obligations, a closeted trans woman in China faces a harrowing choice: risk social abandonment by embracing her true self, or endure the mental strain of remaining invisible to stay safe.
Kelet is a twentysomething black trans woman, whose greatest dream is to be on the cover of Vogue magazine. For the Finnish-born and Manchester-raised Kelet, such models as Naomi Campbell and Iman served as role models giving her strength – and during the darkest times, kept her alive. After coming out, then 19-year-old Kelet was cut off from her family and she moved back to Finland on her own.
A truly major work, I Don’t Know observes the relationship between a lesbian and a transgender person who prefers to be identified somewhere in between male and female, in an expression of personal ambiguity suggested by the film’s title. This nonfiction film – an unusual, partly staged work of semi-verité – is the first of Spheeris’s films to fully embrace what would become her characteristic documentary style: probing, intimate, uncompromising. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2014.
An intimate close-up on Aleya, a trans woman who has recently moved from Cairo to germany right after her transition. This portrait marks her first year as a woman, having to cope with the loss of loved ones, family disownment, hormonal and psychological turmoil. She shares intimate stories, anecdotes and poems that document her transition.
Through letters written to herself at several different pivotal points during her life, Maya Heinecke tells the narrative of her life, and looks ahead at what's next for her.
Raw, revealing and honest, Just Be Gemma explores the subject of gender transformation by telling the personal story of St. John’s, Newfoundland activist Gemma Hickey. Gemma is best known for co-leading the movement that legalized same-sex marriage in Canada and they're the founder of Pathways, an organization that offers support to survivors of clergy sexual abuse. Just Be Gemma is an all-access documentary revealing Gemma's physical changes and internal struggles.
Australian filmmaker Jordan Bryon has been living and working as a journalist and filmmaker in Afghanistan for more than six years. After the departure of US forces, he stays to document Afghan life under the male-centric Taliban leadership. With his colleague, Teddy, he heads to a Taliban stronghold in the north-west of the country, shortly after he started transitioning. If the Taliban knew he was trans, they would likely kill him. It’s a chaotic time, for the country and for Jordan, as he navigates his transformation and looks to the future.
Filmmaker Ester Martin Bergsmark interrogates their response to a transphobic slur hurled at them following their move to Berlin. Exploring the root of violence and its nature, this is a powerful meditation on the trans experience and a treatise on how to move forward from fear.
A short documentary that discusses gender and reconciling with the past.
This queer ecology documentary explores the sexual diversity of the wildlife around us. Director May Matchim draws connections between these incredible species and her own journey accepting her Transness. The title is a reference to the green frog, an amphibian which is able to change its sex as it matures. This film includes a variety of animal and plant subjects, including same-sex bird parents raising chicks together, and a group of salamanders that's entirely female. It also examines the exclusionary attitudes in biology and conservation throughout time, and how these attitudes have influenced our understanding of animal behaviour.
An investigation of how Hollywood's fabled stories have deeply influenced how Americans feel about transgender people, and how transgender people have been taught to feel about themselves.
Police pull over a woman who claims she just gave birth. But the baby — and the blood — aren't hers. Twisted lies unravel in this true-crime documentary.
A teen slams her car into a building, killing her boyfriend and his friend. What seems like a tragic accident becomes a murder case.
Ranjit, a farmer in India, takes on the fight of his life when he demands justice for his 13-year-old daughter, the victim of a brutal gang rape. His decision to support his daughter is virtually unheard of, and his journey unprecedented.
A string of threatening emails escalates into a revenge plot involving a newly married US marshal and his ex-girlfriend.
Through deeply personal interviews with her siblings and an examination of the photographs, letters, and belongings left behind, Mariska assembles a new portrait of her mother Jayne Mansfield, an extraordinary and complex woman.
Serving life in prison for murdering their parents, Lyle and Erik Menendez speak out in this documentary explaining the shocking crime and ensuing trials.
Artists in LA discover the work of forgotten Polish sculptor Stanislav Szukalski, a mad genius whose true story unfolds chapter by astounding chapter.
The life and career of one of comedy's most inimitable modern voices, Mr. Gilbert Gottfried.
This raucous journey into the heart of democracy captures an unusual rite of passage: 1,100 teenage boys from across Texas coming together to build a representative government from the ground up.
Vulgar, taunting texts blow up the phones of a teen and her boyfriend. Who's sending them — and why? This twisty documentary reveals the shocking answer.
Unravel the case of Utah therapist Jodi Hildebrandt, whose child abuse arrest with parenting YouTuber Ruby Franke exposed a twisted tale of manipulation.
This searing investigative work shadows a group of activists risking unimaginable peril to confront the ongoing anti-LGBTQ program raging in the repressive and closed Russian republic. Unfettered access and a remarkable approach to protecting anonymity exposes this under-reported atrocity–and an extraordinary group of people confronting evil.
With rare access and no holds barred, the acclaimed documentarian investigates a growing ultra-masculine network and its controversial influencers.
In this film, Laerte conjugates the body in the feminine, and scrutinizes concepts and prejudices. Not in search of an identity, but in search of un-identities. Laerte creates and sends creatures to face reality in the fictional world of comic strips as a vanguard of the self. And, on the streets, the one who becomes the fiction of a real character. Laerte, of all the bodies, and of none, complicates all binaries. In following Laerte, this documentary chooses to clothe the nudity beyond the skin we inhabit.
Legendary journalist Gay Talese unmasks a motel owner who spied on his guests for decades. But his bombshell story soon becomes a scandal of its own.
Nine filmmakers each profile a young girl from a different part of the world to weave a global tapestry of youth in the 21st century.
Following his infamous championship as part of a marketing stunt for the film Ready to Rumble, David Arquette is widely known as the most hated man in pro-wrestling worldwide. Nearly 20 years after he "won" the initial title, through ups and downs in his career, with his family, and with his struggles with addiction, David Arquette seeks redemption by returning to the ring...for real this time.
Hollywood veteran Bing Russell creates the only independent baseball team in the country—alarming the baseball establishment and sparking the meteoric rise of the 1970s Portland Mavericks.
Exuberant, eye-opening movie that serves up a dazzling hundred-year history of the role of gay men and lesbians have had on the silver screen. Film contains fabulous footage from 120 films showing the changing face of cinema sexuality, from cruel stereotypes to covert love to the activist triumphs of the 1990s.
