This is a guide for trans and non-binary adults deciding what to watch, not a ranking. For each film or series you get who made it, what it is, why it might matter to you, the criticism it has drawn, and what is on screen that you may want a warning about. Nothing here spoils an ending.
We chose for range rather than prestige: documentaries and fiction, work from the 1960s to now, and films and series from Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, France, Japan, Pakistan, the Philippines, Spain, the UK and the United States. Trans women, trans men and non-binary people are all at the centre of something here, and so are many people of colour. We also kept famous films that a lot of trans viewers dislike. You will be asked about them, and knowing why they were criticised is useful in itself.
When an entry says a trans or non-binary person wrote, directed, produced or stars in something, that person has said so publicly, or has been described that way in an interview or profile listed in the entry's sources. We do not guess anyone's identity from their work, their looks or their roles. Where someone has never spoken about it, we say nothing. That leaves gaps, and we would rather have the gaps.
Every entry lists its own sources. We do not say where to stream anything, because that changes every few months. Content notes come from reviews and descriptions rather than a scene-by-scene log, so treat them as a starting point, not a guarantee. Names and pronouns are the ones people use now, so older credits may show a different name.
Documentaries
In a documentary, who holds the camera is always part of the story. Some of these films were made by trans directors. Others were made by filmmakers who have not described themselves as trans and who spent years with the people on screen, and a few are open about the tension that creates. Each entry says what is documented.
If you only watch one thing on this page, Disclosure is a good place to start: it names patterns you will recognise in almost everything else here.
Southern Comfort (2001, documentary film)
Made by: Directed, produced, shot and edited by Kate Davis, United States. Its subject, Robert Eads, was a trans man, and the film features his partner Lola Cola, a trans woman, and his chosen family of trans friends, including Max and Cas.
Robert Eads was a trans man living in the hills of rural Georgia: bearded, pipe in hand, proud to call himself a hillbilly. He was seriously ill with cancer, and had been turned away by doctors who did not want a trans patient. Kate Davis filmed the final year of his life.
Across the seasons we see him falling in love with Lola, spending time with the chosen family he built, receiving visits from his parents and his son, and his dream of making it to the Southern Comfort Conference in Atlanta, a major gathering of trans people.
Why it matters. It is a love story between a trans man and a trans woman, and a portrait of chosen family in the rural South, both still rare on screen. Eads agreed to go public for the first time for this film because, as he told Davis, if it helped one other trans man go to a doctor, it was worth it. It is also a hard record of what medical discrimination costs.
Worth knowing. Looking back in 2026, critic Blake Peterson agreed with writer Sally Jane Black that the film is not angry enough on Eads's behalf: Davis focuses on who he was rather than naming the doctors who refused him. Peterson also points to the tension of his story being presented by an outsider with more social power. Davis's own production notes say several participants were closeted, which limited filming at the conference.
Content notes: denial of medical care, terminal illness and dying, misgendering by family, references to the Ku Klux Klan
Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria (2005, documentary film)
Made by: Directed, written and produced by Susan Stryker and Victor Silverman, made in association with ITVS and KQED for American public television. Stryker, a historian and a trans woman, appears on screen, and the interviewees include trans women who lived in the Tenderloin in the 1960s, among them Felicia Elizondo, Amanda St. Jaymes and Tamara Ching.
One night in August 1966, in San Francisco's Tenderloin district, police came into Gene Compton's Cafeteria, an all-night place where trans women, drag queens and young street hustlers gathered. When an officer grabbed one of the customers, she threw her coffee in his face and the cafeteria erupted. It happened three years before Stonewall, and it was almost forgotten.
Decades later, historian Susan Stryker found a trace of it and went looking for the people who had been there. The film is built from their interviews, with a police sergeant, ministers from a local church and neighbourhood activists, and it places the riot inside the city's poverty, urban renewal and 1960s civil rights movements.
Why it matters. If you were taught that trans history starts at Stonewall, this is the corrective, told largely by the trans women of the Tenderloin themselves. It is short, under an hour, and plainly made for public TV, but it helped put Compton's back into the record. It also ties trans survival to jobs, housing and policing rather than treating identity as the whole story.
Worth knowing. The riot left almost no paper trail. There was no press coverage at the time, the exact night is not known, and NPR reports that the only written account that survived was a short 1972 article by activist Raymond Broshears. The film rests on memories gathered decades later, which is both its strength and its limit.
Content notes: police harassment and violence, sex work, drug use, poverty
Bambi (2013, documentary film)
Made by: Directed by Sébastien Lifshitz, France, in French, a portrait of about an hour. Its subject, Marie-Pierre Pruvot, known on stage as Bambi, is one of the first trans women in France to transition and live it publicly.
Marie-Pierre Pruvot was born in 1935 in French Algeria and felt from childhood that she was a girl, though she was made to live as a boy. As a teenager she saw the trans performer Coccinelle on stage and decided to live as a woman. Under the name Bambi she became a star of Paris cabarets such as Le Carrousel in the 1950s and 1960s.
Then, past 30, she went back to school, became a French teacher, and taught for decades at a school outside Paris. Lifshitz sits with her and lets her tell it. The film won the Teddy Award for best documentary at the 2013 Berlin International Film Festival.
Why it matters. Bambi lived through decades when, as Lifshitz put it, the words for her did not yet exist, and she tells her life with a real storyteller's gift. It is a rare chance to hear a trans elder describe a public life in mid-century Paris and then a long, ordinary, respected career afterwards. It is a reminder that trans women had whole lives back then, not just scandals.
Worth knowing. The 2013 cut runs under an hour, and Lifshitz later said he felt he "hadn't gone all the way" and wanted to "repair the film". A 90-minute version aired on Canal+ in 2021. Either version is essentially one woman's testimony, which is its strength.
Content notes: hostility and rejection in mid-century France and colonial Algeria, childhood pressure to live as a boy
Kumu Hina (2014, documentary film)
Made by: Directed and produced by Dean Hamer and Joe Wilson, United States (Hawaiʻi), in English and Hawaiian, broadcast on PBS's Independent Lens in 2015. Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, a Native Hawaiian māhū teacher, is credited as haku moʻolelo (storyteller) and narrator, and Native Hawaiian filmmaker Connie M. Florez co-produced.
Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, known as Kumu (teacher) Hina, is a Native Hawaiian māhū, a word PBS describes as meaning those who embody both male and female spirit. She is cultural director at a Hawaiian language charter school in Honolulu.
The film follows her as she uses traditional culture to encourage a student, Hoʻonani, to claim her place as leader of the school's all-male hula troupe. In her own life, she longs for love and commitment, and is married to a Tongan man. It is a subtle, observational film, narrated in Hina's own voice.
Why it matters. It shows a gender outside Western categories as something with deep roots and a respected place in its own culture, not a new idea that needs explaining. Hina is not presented as a saint: IndieWire's reviewer praised the film for showing her brave and self-assured but also insecure, respected at work and struggling at home. It shows a side of Hawaiʻi rarely seen on screen.
Worth knowing. Watch the labels. PBS and the film's own site gloss māhū as "transgender", but IndieWire's 2014 reviewer wrote that calling Hina a trans woman imposed a mainland term, since māhū is her own word. The same reviewer noted the film does not paper over the cracks in her marriage.
Content notes: strain and conflict in a marriage
Bixa Travesty (2018, documentary film)
Made by: Directed by Claudia Priscilla and Kiko Goifman, with Linn da Quebrada contributing to the script, Brazil, in Portuguese. Linn, a Black Brazilian singer and performer, calls herself a travesti, a word she says carries a lot of history and that she claims with pride; her friend and stage partner Jup do Bairro, also a Black trans musician, appears too.
Linn da Quebrada grew up on the outskirts of São Paulo and makes music informed by baile funk that takes apart machismo, racism and gender norms. Bixa Travesty follows her on stage with Jup do Bairro, in a podcast-style set where she speaks straight to camera, and at home with her mother, where they talk about gender and poverty.
It is less a conventional portrait than a mix of performance, conversation and staged scenes, a form Linn describes as not fiction but "frictional". It premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival and won the Teddy Award for best documentary.
Why it matters. Linn has said cinema "helped build the absence of the travesti", and that she wanted a film that brought her own gaze on herself. This is that: a Black travesti setting the terms of how she is seen, loud, funny and political, in a country where, the Guardian reported, more trans people were killed in 2019 than anywhere else.
Worth knowing. The directors are not the subject, and Linn addressed that head-on: she said she did not want a film about her but one made with her, and calls it "our film". Priscilla told Veja that Linn followed every cut and had as much say as the two directors.
Content notes: frank talk about sex and the body, discussion of explicit images, transphobia and racism, family tension over gender
Happy Birthday, Marsha! (2018, short)
Made by: Written and directed by Tourmaline (credited at the time as Reina Gossett) and Sasha Wortzel, United States, with Zackary Drucker as consulting producer; Mya Taylor plays Johnson and Eve Lindley plays Rivera. Tourmaline has described herself as a Black trans woman.
This is a short fiction film, not a documentary. It imagines Marsha P. Johnson on a hot day in June 1969: she throws a birthday party and nobody shows up, while her friend Sylvia Rivera has troubles of her own. Through a hard day of harassment and loneliness the two friends make their way to the Stonewall Inn, on the night the police plan to raid it.
Tourmaline and Wortzel first set out to make a documentary about Johnson and Rivera, then changed course to a narrative short, crowdfunded on Kickstarter, which they described as a proof of concept for a feature.
Why it matters. It is a tribute to two people of colour at the heart of queer and trans liberation, made by a Black trans woman who spent more than a decade digging for Johnson's story in archives and living rooms. It pictures Johnson and Rivera as friends having an ordinary, difficult day, not only as symbols. Watch it as a tribute, not as history.
Worth knowing. It takes liberties with the record: Johnson's birthday was in August, and in a later interview she said the riot had already started when she arrived. The film also sits inside a public dispute with David France's documentary The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, which is covered in that film's entry below.
Content notes: police harassment and a police raid, drug use, loneliness and rejection
Disclosure (2020, documentary film)
Made by: Directed by Sam Feder, a trans filmmaker, and produced by Feder and Amy Scholder, with Laverne Cox, who also appears, among the executive producers, United States. Feder told Deadline that more than 150 trans people worked on the film, and that when a trans crew member could not be hired, a trans filmmaker was mentored.
Disclosure looks at about a century of mostly American film and TV through the eyes of the trans people who grew up watching it. Laverne Cox, Jen Richards, Yance Ford, Lilly Wachowski, Angelica Ross, Brian Michael Smith, Chaz Bono, Susan Stryker and many others watch clips and talk about what those images taught them, and taught everyone else, about who trans people are.
It moves between the painful, like the "reveal" played for disgust and the trans character as joke or killer, and the unexpectedly tender, like Cox finding something of herself in Yentl, or Stryker and Wachowski in Bugs Bunny.
Why it matters. Many of us absorbed these images before we had words for ourselves. Disclosure names that, with trans actors, writers and scholars doing all the talking and trans people behind the camera too. Feder has described making it as "simultaneously excruciating and validating", and watching it can feel the same way.
Worth knowing. It is almost entirely about American screen culture, and Feder has said "there's still a lot missing" from the mountain of footage. Feder has also said that visibility in itself is not the goal, since more visibility has come with more backlash, and the film holds that tension rather than resolving it.
Content notes: transphobic jokes and "reveal" scenes, clips portraying trans people as deceptive, disgusting or violent, discussion of violence against trans women
No Ordinary Man (2020, documentary film)
Made by: Directed by Aisling Chin-Yee and Chase Joynt, written by Chin-Yee and Amos Mac, Canada. Joynt is trans, and Billy Tipton is played in auditions and scenes by actors who are trans men, among them Marquise Vilsón and Scott Turner Schofield.
Billy Tipton was a jazz pianist and singer who lived as a man from 1933, played clubs across the American West and Midwest, and later settled in Spokane with his wife Kitty and their three adopted sons. When he died in 1989, it became public that he had been assigned female at birth, and tabloids and talk shows turned his family's life into a spectacle.
No Ordinary Man does not try to settle who Tipton "really" was. The filmmakers audition trans men actors for scenes written about his life, then ask what the role stirs up in them. Trans writers and scholars discuss how his story has been told, and his son Billy Jr. talks about his father.
Why it matters. Films about trans masculinity are still few, and this one treats a man who never spoke for himself with real care. Watching trans men of different ages and backgrounds find themselves in, and argue with, a life lived before our current words is moving. Joynt has said the aim was to put the storytelling "into the hands of as many transmasculine-identified people as possible."
Worth knowing. Tipton never explained himself publicly, so every account of him is an interpretation. The film openly argues with the best-known one, Diane Wood Middlebrook's 1998 biography, which participants say framed his life as a practical choice to work in music. The New Yorker's Richard Brody, who admired it, noted that its meta approach has limits and rarely lingers on its own process.
Content notes: outing after death, archival talk-show and tabloid clips treating Tipton's life as a fraud, intrusive questioning of his family, discussion of the circumstances of his death
Framing Agnes (2022, documentary film)
Made by: Directed by Chase Joynt, written by Joynt and Morgan M. Page, Canada. Joynt, who is trans, plays the interviewer, and the people in the case files are played by trans actors Angelica Ross, Zackary Drucker, Jen Richards, Max Wolf Valerio, Silas Howard and Stephen Ira, with historian Jules Gill-Peterson as a guide.
In the early 1960s, a young trans woman known by the pseudonym Agnes took part in sociologist Harold Garfinkel's gender research at UCLA and became a famous case in sociology. Decades later, Chase Joynt and sociologist Kristen Schilt found the transcripts of Garfinkel's interviews with her and with other trans people in a rusted filing cabinet.
Framing Agnes restages those interviews as a black-and-white, 1960s-style talk show, then cuts to the actors, the filmmakers and historian Jules Gill-Peterson talking about what it means to play these people, how trans stories get told, and why we look for icons at all. It grew out of Joynt's 2019 short of the same name.
Why it matters. Much of our early history reaches us through doctors' files and talk shows. Instead of pretending to recover the "real" Agnes, this film hands the archive to trans people and lets them argue with it, and with the idea of the trans icon. As Angelica Ross says in the film: "We have heard the stories told by the hunter, and not by the lion."
Worth knowing. Reviews were mixed on its form. In Paste, Shayna Maci Warner found it "formally incomplete and jagged", said it used too little of the extraordinary transcripts, and called its theoretical approach fairly inaccessible for a project built on ordinary trans people's testimony. If you want a straightforward history, this is not it.
Content notes: re-enacted research interviews about gender and bodies, talk-show style scrutiny of trans people, clips of the press dissecting trans celebrities
Kokomo City (2023, documentary film)
Made by: Directed, produced, shot and edited by D. Smith, United States, with Lena Waithe and Rishi Rajani among the executive producers. Smith is a trans woman and Grammy-winning music producer, and the film's four subjects are Black trans women.
Four Black trans women who do or have done sex work, Daniella Carter and Dominique Silver in New York and Koko Da Doll and Liyah Mitchell in Atlanta, talk to D. Smith's camera in their bedrooms, cars and homes. They are funny, blunt and sharp about clients, danger, family, and the way Black cis men who pursue them in private often shame them in public.
Smith shoots in black and white with the energy of a music video, adds tongue-in-cheek re-enactments, and also interviews some Black men about desire, gender and masculinity.
Why it matters. It does not reduce Black trans women to trauma. These women tell their own stories, on their own terms, to a director who by her own account lost her music career and her housing after she transitioned. It refuses respectability and the usual careful talking points, which is exactly what some viewers will love and others will find hard.
Worth knowing. The Hollywood Reporter's review found the interviews with Black men sometimes sit awkwardly beside the women's testimony. Variety's Peter Debruge flagged a late sequence centred on the women's bodies as a choice some trans viewers find controversial. Koko Da Doll was shot and killed in Atlanta in April 2023, a few months after the premiere, and the film is dedicated to her.
Content notes: frank sexual talk, nudity, a violent encounter with a client involving a gun, slurs used by the subjects, family rejection, discussion of violence against trans women
Orlando, ma biographie politique (Orlando, My Political Biography) (2023, documentary film)
Made by: Written and directed by Paul B. Preciado, France, in French, produced by Les Films du Poisson with 24 Images and ARTE France. Preciado, a Spanish-born, Paris-based philosopher described by his producers as a transgender writer and activist, cast 26 trans and non-binary people aged 8 to 70, most of them non-professional actors.
Asked why he never wrote his own biography, Paul B. Preciado answers that Virginia Woolf already did, in 1928. Woolf's Orlando is a poet who changes sex and lives across centuries. Preciado's film is a filmed letter to Woolf: her Orlando has walked out of the book and is alive today, as 26 trans and non-binary people who each introduce themselves as Orlando.
They read passages from the novel, talk about their own lives, families and run-ins with psychiatry, and act out scenes on deliberately homemade sets, with cameos from the artists Pierre et Gilles and novelist Virginie Despentes. It premiered at the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Teddy Award for best documentary.
Why it matters. It gives a big, varied group of trans and non-binary people, from children to elders, the same starring role and lets each of them own it. It is playful and furious at once, treats gender as a political question as much as a personal one, and reads a classic of literature as our story, told by us. If you like essays more than plots, start here.
Worth knowing. It is essayistic and low-budget by design, with sets filmed beyond their frame. Redmond Bacon at Journey Into Cinema, who liked it, still found it "a little stagey and repetitive in parts". Preciado has said he wanted to avoid giving "a fixed image of what transness is", so expect ideas and voices more than a story.
Content notes: discussion of psychiatric gatekeeping, family rejection and transphobia, frank talk about transition
The Stroll (2023, documentary film)
Made by: Directed by Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker for HBO Documentary Films, United States. Both directors are trans filmmakers, and Lovell, who is Black, worked The Stroll herself in the 1990s and is one of the film's voices.
For decades, the block of West 14th Street near the Hudson River, today luxury stores and the High Line, was where many Black and Latina trans women made a living through sex work. They called it The Stroll. Kristen Lovell was one of them. She started filming other women there at around 19, and years later, with Zackary Drucker, she went back to find the ones who survived.
The film weaves their conversations together with news footage that once treated them as a problem, cut-out animation, and the story of how policing and gentrification pushed them out, including the 2000 killing of Amanda Milan and the community's response.
Why it matters. This is trans history told from the street, by the women who lived it, and it will not apologise for sex work or turn it into a cautionary tale. Drucker has said the sex worker trope pushed people to focus on other stories, which erased these women from our history. The legacy of Sylvia Rivera runs all through it.
Worth knowing. Screen Daily's Fionnuala Halligan noted it is not a fact-driven history: there is no roll call of the dead, little on what happened to those who went missing, and no overt mention of AIDS or the crack epidemic. It also includes an old clip of RuPaul mocking the women on the block, which the directors chose to show.
Content notes: the killing of Amanda Milan, police abuse, incarceration, violence from clients, drug use, archive footage mocking trans women
Feature films with trans people at the centre
Fiction with trans characters at the heart of the story, mostly played by trans actors. Some are written and directed by trans filmmakers; others come from directors who have not described themselves as trans, working with trans actors in the lead. Most are small independent films, several are not in English, and not all of them are gentle.
By Hook or by Crook (2001, feature film)
Made by: Written, directed and produced by Silas Howard and Harry Dodge, who also star, with co-writer Stanya Kahn (United States). Howard is a trans director and uses he. Dodge uses he, has described himself as a "sort of macho butch", and has said he long avoided talking about gender at all.
Shy (Howard), whom the filmmakers describe as "a handsome, gender-bending, small-town butch", leaves Kansas for San Francisco after his father dies. There he meets Valentine (Dodge), an adoptee searching for his birth mother, and the two become best friends and small-time partners in crime, along with Val's lover Billie (Kahn). They are broke, a bit lost, and completely sure of each other.
Why it matters. Made on almost no money by two artists from San Francisco's queer punk and performance scene, it is a buddy movie about two [[butch|butch]] outsiders in which, as IndieWire put it, Shy and Val never question each other's gender. IndieWire also called it one of the most influential trans films ever made. It is a piece of trans and butch history that still feels alive.
Worth knowing. It was shot on mini DV and looks rough. Reviews at the time were mixed: Variety's Robert Koehler found it boring, and Wesley Morris (Boston Globe) called it "not particularly good." In 2022, Howard and Dodge told Filmmaker Magazine they were raising money to restore it.
Content notes: petty crime, fights, poverty, grief after a parent's death, the threat of arrest
Tangerine (2015, feature film)
Made by: Directed by Sean Baker and written by Baker and Chris Bergoch (United States), shot on iPhone 5s cameras. The two leads, Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor, are trans actresses, and Variety reported that they gave significant input on the screenplay.
It is Christmas Eve in Hollywood. Sin-Dee Rella (Rodriguez), a trans sex worker, has just finished a 28-day jail stint when her best friend Alexandra (Taylor) lets slip that Sin-Dee's boyfriend, who is also her pimp, has been cheating on her. Sin-Dee storms off across the neighbourhood to find him and the other woman, while Alexandra hands out flyers for a singing gig she hopes someone will actually come to.
It is fast, loud and very funny, and a parallel storyline follows an Armenian cab driver with a secret of his own.
Why it matters. Two trans women of colour carry the whole film, and they get to be petty, loyal, furious and hilarious rather than tragic lessons for someone else. Its producers and distributor ran what was reported as the first awards campaign for trans actresses, and Mya Taylor became the first trans woman to win a Gotham Award. The friendship between Sin-Dee and Alexandra is the real love story.
Worth knowing. The Advocate reported criticism of the film for, once again, showing trans women as sex workers. Rodriguez answered: "I would say it's realistic." Taylor, who had done sex work herself, used the attention to speak out against its stigma.
Content notes: sex work shown frankly, drug use, transphobic slurs and harassment, physical fights, police
Karera ga honki de amu toki wa (Close-Knit) (2017, feature film)
Made by: Written and directed by Naoko Ogigami (Japan, in Japanese). Rinko, the trans woman at the heart of the film, is played by Toma Ikuta, described in Seventh Row's review as a cisgender male actor. The sources we found document no trans people among the lead cast or key crew.
Tomo is 11 and used to looking after herself. Whenever her mother runs off with a new man, Tomo goes to stay with her uncle Makio. This time Makio lives with his girlfriend Rinko, a trans woman who runs their home with great care and who knits. Rinko takes Tomo in with a warmth the girl has never had, and the three start to feel like a family, though not everyone around them is kind about it.
Why it matters. It is a gentle, mainstream Japanese family film in which a trans woman is loved, respected and needed. Elena Lazic (Seventh Row) called it a milestone for a national cinema that very rarely acknowledges trans people at all, let alone in a positive light. It won the Teddy Special Jury Award at the Berlinale.
Worth knowing. Rinko is played by a cis man. Lazic wrote that "it's of course a shame that Rinko is played by cisgender male actor Toma Ikuta", and found the film "disappointingly conservative", with "a decidedly non-confrontational approach to transphobia." The same review praised its warmth.
Content notes: child neglect, transphobic and homophobic hostility from a parent, a boy hiding that he is gay
Una mujer fantástica (A Fantastic Woman) (2017, feature film)
Made by: Directed by Sebastián Lelio, written by Lelio and Gonzalo Maza. A Chilean film co-produced with Germany and Spain, in Spanish. Daniela Vega, who plays Marina, is a trans woman; she first came on board as a consultant on the script before Lelio offered her the lead.
Marina is a singer and waitress in Santiago who lives with her older partner, Orlando. When he dies suddenly one night, his family and the police treat her not as a grieving partner but as a suspect and a problem to be managed. She is questioned, told to stay away from the funeral and pushed out of the home they shared, and she keeps looking for a way to say goodbye on her own terms.
Why it matters. Vega plays Marina with a stubborn dignity that never asks the audience for pity, and the film stays on her side. It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Chile's first in that category, and Vega became the first trans person to present at the Oscars. In Chile, where a gender identity bill was moving slowly through Congress, trans activists described her as a role model.
Worth knowing. Lelio and Maza told The Guardian they did not know any trans people in Chile when they started writing, which is why they brought in Vega. Some critics felt the film is more interested in what is done to Marina than in who she is: Emily Yoshida (Vulture) wished Vega and Lelio would "let us in a little more to see her as an individual, aside from the hostility she encounters", and Christopher Gray (Slant) called it regressive.
Content notes: grief, transphobic hostility from a partner's family, misgendering and deadnaming by police, a forced and humiliating police examination, an assault and kidnapping by family members
Lingua Franca (2019, feature film)
Made by: Written, directed, produced and edited by Isabel Sandoval, who also plays the lead (a Philippine and American production, mostly in English). Sandoval is a Filipina trans woman and immigrant living in Brooklyn, like her character, and has said it was the first film she made after her transition.
Olivia is an undocumented Filipina trans woman working as a live-in caregiver for Olga, an elderly Russian-Jewish woman in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, whose memory is starting to go. Olivia sends money home and is paying an American man for a marriage that could get her a green card. Then Olga's adult grandson Alex, just out of rehab, moves in, and something slow and uncertain starts between Olivia and him, while the fear of immigration raids never leaves the room.
Why it matters. This is a trans woman of colour telling a story about desire, work and papers in her own voice, and playing it herself. Olivia's transness is part of her life, not the whole plot. Sandoval has said she borrowed the shape of a familiar melodrama on purpose, so that the film could show Olivia is "more than just a trans woman looking for love, or an immigrant without papers." If you have ever weighed safety against intimacy, it will feel close.
Worth knowing. It is quiet and withholding by design, and not every critic went with it: Stephen Dalton (The Hollywood Reporter) called it "an underpowered, amateurish disappointment", and Jeannette Catsoulis (The New York Times) found it "too dramatically shy and narratively slight to stir."
Content notes: fear of immigration raids and deportation, transphobic taunts, alcohol and addiction, outing and a violation of privacy, sexual content
Port Authority (2019, feature film)
Made by: Written and directed by Danielle Lessovitz (United States and France), produced with Martin Scorsese's company. Leyna Bloom, who plays Wye, is a trans actress of colour from the ballroom community; Lessovitz said she never considered casting anyone who wasn't trans in the role.
Paul, a 20-year-old with nowhere to stay, arrives at New York's Port Authority bus terminal and is drawn to Wye, a young woman voguing on the sidewalk with her ballroom family. He ends up split between two worlds: a crew of macho guys who get him work on evictions, and Wye's kiki ballroom house. Their romance starts before he knows she is trans, and the film follows what he does with that.
Why it matters. Bloom became the first trans actress of colour to lead a film at Cannes, and she brings real ballroom life to the screen: "I am a trans woman in ballroom playing a character," she told the Los Angeles Times. Even critics who disliked the film praised her, and the scenes with her house family are the reason to watch.
Worth knowing. The story is told from Paul's side, and critics called that out. Odie Henderson (RogerEbert.com) wrote that Wye is "almost an afterthought at times" and that "it's too bad this film isn't really about them." Robert Daniels (The Playlist) called it "another short-sighted film using Black folks as a lesson for ignorant white outsiders."
Content notes: homophobic and transphobic slurs, a mugging, gay-bashing violence, evictions, lies and a hidden relationship
Joyland (2022, feature film)
Made by: Directed by Saim Sadiq, written by Sadiq and Maggie Briggs (Pakistan, in Urdu and Punjabi). Alina Khan, who plays Biba, is a trans actress from Lahore who had also starred in Sadiq's short film Darling.
In Lahore, Haider, the unemployed younger son of a patriarch who wants a grandson, takes a secret job as a backup dancer in an erotic dance theatre. The star of the show is Biba, a trans dancer with a sharp tongue and big ambitions, and Haider falls for her. At home, his wife Mumtaz is ordered to give up the salon job she loves. The film follows what this house full of rules does to everyone living in it.
Why it matters. Biba is proud, funny, demanding and set on being a star, played by a trans actress from the city where the film is set. Sadiq said "it's just refreshing to see a very empowered trans character who happens to be brown and Muslim and in a country like Pakistan." It won the Jury Prize in Un Certain Regard and the Queer Palm at Cannes.
Worth knowing. Pakistan's government banned it in November 2022 after complaints from religious hardliners who called it "repugnant". The federal ban was lifted, but Punjab province, where Lahore is, kept its own ban; in August 2025 Dawn reported it would finally screen in Lahore, at an event space. Note that Haider, not Biba, is the main character.
Content notes: violence against trans women (a killing is described), groping and sexual harassment, crude questions about a trans woman's body, patriarchal control, sexual content, a sudden death in the family
Monica (2022, feature film)
Made by: Directed by Andrea Pallaoro, written by Pallaoro and Orlando Tirado (United States and Italy). Trace Lysette, who plays Monica, is a trans actress; she first auditioned for the role in 2016.
Monica, a trans woman, gets a call from her sister-in-law: her mother, who rejected her as a teenager, is seriously ill. Monica goes back to the family home to help care for her. Her mother, who has not seen her since before her transition and whose illness affects her mind, does not recognise her, and Monica decides not to say who she is.
Why it matters. It is a rare leading role for a trans woman, and Lysette carries it almost without speeches, in looks and held breath. The film understands estrangement from the inside: coming home as a stranger, caring for someone who hurt you, wanting something you can't ask for. It premiered in competition at Venice, where Out reported an 11-minute standing ovation.
Worth knowing. Its restraint does not work for everyone: Jon Frosch (The Hollywood Reporter) called it "a sluggish exercise in formalism" that "feels like a movie perpetually struggling to connect." It is quiet and slow, and it explains very little.
Content notes: rejection by a parent, a parent's serious illness, family estrangement, loneliness
Something You Said Last Night (2022, feature film)
Made by: Written and directed by Luis De Filippis (Canada and Switzerland, in English and Italian). De Filippis is a trans woman. Lead Carmen Madonia is trans and was making her first film, and De Filippis ran a mentorship programme that brought five trans youth onto the crew.
Ren is in her mid-20s, an aspiring writer who has just lost her job, and she has been dragged along on a week-long summer holiday with her Italian-Canadian parents and her sister at a beach resort in Ontario. That is more or less the story: bickering, boredom, a mother who worries too much, sisters who fight over a tacky hat. Ren is torn between wanting her own independent life and how easy it is to let her family take care of her again.
Why it matters. There is no coming out, no transition plot and no violence waiting around the corner. De Filippis has said she was tired of trans films told from a cis perspective and fixated on transition or coming out. Mel Woods, reviewing it for Xtra, described bracing for a misgendering or a cruel remark that never came. Ren gets to be moody, loving and a bit lost, like anyone on a family holiday.
Worth knowing. Its quietness is also its limit for some: Lovia Gyarkye (The Hollywood Reporter) felt that without more insight into Ren it "can feel unintentionally impenetrable at times", and Erik Piepenburg (The New York Times) wanted more than naturalism and tenderness to drive it.
Content notes: family arguments and tension (reviewers note that it avoids transphobic violence and misgendering)
20.000 especies de abejas (20,000 Species of Bees) (2023, feature film)
Made by: Written and directed by Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren, her first feature (Spain, in Spanish, Basque and French). The director worked with Naizen, an association of families of trans minors, to get the child's experience right.
Over one summer in the Basque Country, an eight-year-old who goes by a nickname and privately thinks of herself as Lucía stays at her grandmother's house with her mother Ane and her siblings. The house is tied to beekeeping, and Ane, a sculptor in the middle of her own midlife crisis, works with their beeswax. As Lucía tries to make herself understood, the women of three generations around her start looking hard at their own lives too.
Why it matters. It looks at a trans child with patience and gentleness, and treats the family's slow understanding as the drama, not the child's existence. Sofía Otero became the youngest-ever winner of the Berlinale's Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance. If you remember being a kid who knew before anyone around you did, parts of it will land hard.
Worth knowing. Leigh Monson (The A.V. Club) pointed out that Urresola Solaguren is not herself trans, so there are limits to how deeply the film can go into Lucía's feelings, and found flaws in its pacing and depth, while praising its empathy.
Content notes: misgendering and a child's birth name used within the family, a parent's denial, hints of a grandparent's bigotry, a child's fear of rejection
Mutt (2023, feature film)
Made by: Written and directed by Vuk Lungulov-Klotz (United States, in English and Spanish). Lungulov-Klotz is a trans man and drew on his own life as the child of Chilean and Serbian parents. Lead Lío Mehiel is trans, uses they/them, and has described themself as having "mixed genders" and Puerto Rican and Greek roots.
Over one hectic day in New York, Feña, a young trans man, collides with three people he lost touch with after his transition: his straight ex-boyfriend, his estranged younger half-sister, and his father, who is flying in from Chile and needs picking up at the airport. Each of them has to meet the person Feña is now, and he has to decide how much of himself he is willing to keep explaining.
Why it matters. Trans men are still rarely the centre of a film, and this one was made from the inside, with a mostly trans and queer cast and crew. Mehiel became the first trans person to win the U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for acting at Sundance. It is honest about the small daily costs, like being misgendered at the bank, and just as honest about tenderness and desire.
Worth knowing. Clayton Dillard (Slant) wrote that "Feña suffers so that other trans people won't have to", which in the review's view "reduces Mutt to an Afterschool Special." Lungulov-Klotz has said trans viewers tend to find the film balanced and sweet, while people who aren't trans think he puts his character through a lot.
Content notes: misgendering, a father questioning and invalidating his child's transition, family estrangement, sexual intimacy
I Saw the TV Glow (2024, feature film)
Made by: Written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun (United States), with Justice Smith and Jack Haven. Schoenbrun is trans, uses they/them, and wrote the film after coming out. Haven, credited under their former name Brigette Lundy-Paine, came out as non-binary in 2019 and announced the name Jack Haven in 2025.
In 1996, two lonely suburban teenagers, Owen (Smith) and Maddy (Haven), bond over The Pink Opaque, a late-night TV show about two girls with a psychic connection fighting a villain. Owen isn't allowed to stay up for it, so Maddy shares it with him. As the years pass, the show comes to feel more real to them than their own lives, and the line between the two starts to blur.
Why it matters. Schoenbrun has described it as a film about the [[egg|egg crack]] and about dysphoria as they lived it for 30 years before having language for it: internal, subliminal, sometimes terrifying. There is no coming-out scene and no transition story, only the feeling. If you spent years sensing something was wrong without knowing what, this is a film made from inside that feeling.
Worth knowing. It is an allegory, slow and deliberately uncomfortable, not a comforting watch. Some critics found it hard going: Amy Nicholson (Los Angeles Times) called it "a collection of leaden scenes that might make the audience want to claw out of its own skin."
Content notes: graphic self-harm, depression and a breakdown, a controlling parent, a parent's illness and death, burial imagery
Series
Television gives a character room: several seasons to have friends, jobs, bad days and a love life. These series are here for what they did with trans and non-binary characters. In some of them those characters are the whole story; in others they are one thread among many, and each entry says which.
Orange Is the New Black (2013, series)
Made by: Created by Jenji Kohan for Netflix, United States, based on Piper Kerman's prison memoir; seven seasons, 2013 to 2019. Laverne Cox, who has described herself as "a proud, African-American transgender woman", plays Sophia Burset, a recurring character.
The show follows Piper Chapman, a privileged white woman sent to a women's prison, then widens out to the women around her. This entry is about one of them: Sophia Burset, the prison's hairdresser, a former firefighter serving time for credit card fraud. Her wife, Crystal, has accepted her transition. Her son, Michael, struggles with her transition and has stopped speaking to her.
An early episode goes back to Sophia's life before prison, including a tender scene in which Crystal helps her dress as a woman for the first time. Later seasons put her through much harder things inside.
Why it matters. In 2013, TV Guide called a trans woman of colour playing a trans woman of colour a first on mainstream television. Sophia is a parent, a wife, a friend and a businesswoman, not a punchline. Cox became the first trans person nominated for an Emmy, in 2014, and the first trans person on the cover of Time. TV Guide suggested she was probably the first trans person many viewers had ever seen, on TV or anywhere.
Worth knowing. Sophia is a supporting character in a show built around Piper; Kohan has called Piper her "Trojan horse" for getting stories of Black, Latina and older women onto TV. That means Sophia's screen time is uneven across seven seasons, and several of her later storylines centre on what the prison system does to her.
Content notes: prison, misgendering, mockery and threats, a prison denying a trans woman the care she needs, a transphobic assault, long solitary confinement, sexual assault involving other characters, drug addiction
Boy Meets Girl (2015, series)
Made by: Created and written by Elliott Kerrigan, produced by Tiger Aspect for BBC Two, United Kingdom; two series, 2015 and 2016. Rebecca Root, who plays Judy, is a trans woman, and the BBC committed early on to casting a trans actor in the role.
Leo is 26, has just lost his job again, and gets a hard time from his mum. Judy is 40. On their first date she tells him she is trans. He is still interested, and the sitcom follows the two of them as they fall for each other and deal with their families, who are not always ready.
In form it is a traditional British family sitcom: mothers, siblings, awkward dinners and broad jokes, built around a love story.
Why it matters. Root called it the first mainstream UK sitcom to cast a trans actor in a lead trans role, and the first in the UK to show romance between a trans actress in a trans role and a cis man. The romance is the point: a trans woman in her forties is the one being wooed. The script came out of the Trans Comedy Award, a BBC Writersroom search for comedy scripts that portray trans people positively.
Worth knowing. Reviewing the first episode in The Telegraph, Jasper Rees called it a big TV moment but said it bent over backwards to please a mainstream audience with "crude clichés", including jokes about Judy's body. How much you enjoy it may depend on how much you like old-fashioned family sitcom humour.
Content notes: jokes about trans bodies, clumsy and occasionally transphobic remarks from family members played for laughs
Sense8 (2015, series)
Made by: Created by Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski and J. Michael Straczynski for Netflix, United States, filmed in cities around the world; two seasons from 2015 to 2017 and a finale in 2018. Lana and Lilly Wachowski are both trans, and Jamie Clayton, who plays Nomi Marks, is a trans woman.
Eight strangers scattered across the world, from San Francisco to Mumbai to Mexico City, suddenly find that they are mentally and emotionally linked. They can feel what the others feel, borrow each other's skills and languages, and step into each other's lives. And an organisation is hunting people like them.
In San Francisco, Nomi Marks is a hacker and political blogger living with her girlfriend, Amanita. She is one of the eight, and her story is not about transition: it is about love, danger, and learning to live connected to seven other people.
Why it matters. Nomi was written by a trans woman and played by one. Clayton said that working with Lana Wachowski, a trans director who had written a trans character, was her number one reason for taking the part, and that it mattered that the story did not centre on transition. The whole show is built on empathy crossing lines of gender, sexuality and nation, and fans cared enough to campaign for a proper ending.
Worth knowing. It is slow and scattered at first. Reviewing the opening episodes for Variety, Brian Lowry wrote that the show "doesn't make much sense" and felt disjointed. Netflix cancelled it in 2017, saying its audience was too small for its costs; after fan campaigns, a two-hour finale, "Amor Vincit Omnia", came out in 2018.
Content notes: a trans woman held in a hospital against her will, a mother who rejects her, violence and people being hunted
Pose (2018, series)
Made by: Created by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Steven Canals for FX, United States; three seasons, 2018 to 2021. Janet Mock, a trans woman, wrote, directed and produced; Our Lady J, a trans writer, was in the writers' room; trans director Silas Howard was a co-executive producer; and trans actors MJ Rodriguez, Indya Moore, Dominique Jackson, Hailie Sahar and Angelica Ross are series regulars.
New York, 1987. Blanca does nails by day and walks the balls at night, the competitions where houses of queer and trans people battle for trophies and glory. Tired of her house mother Elektra's cruelty, she starts a house of her own and takes in young people who have nowhere else to go. Around her are Angel, a sex worker falling for a married client, and Pray Tell (Billy Porter), who hosts the balls.
The show moves between the ballroom, the houses and hospital wards at the height of the AIDS crisis. It is a melodrama, openly and on purpose: big feelings, big gowns, found family.
Why it matters. Pose put more trans actors in series regular roles than any scripted show before it, and it puts Black and Latina trans women at the centre of their own story. Janet Mock became the first trans woman of colour to write and direct an episode of television on it. If you know ballroom only from Paris Is Burning, this is the same world imagined from the inside, with as much room for joy as for grief.
Worth knowing. IndieWire's Ben Travers found it too blunt at times, with scenes that stop to school the audience on trans issues. At the 2021 premiere of the final season, Janet Mock gave a speech criticising her pay ("Why am I making $40,000 an episode?"), the early writing by men, and an industry that, in her words, has "stomped on us."
Content notes: HIV and AIDS, illness and grief, sex work, young people thrown out by their families
Veneno (2020, series)
Made by: Created by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi for Atresplayer Premium, Spain, in Spanish; one season of eight episodes, based on journalist Valeria Vegas's book about Cristina Ortiz. The creators set out to cast trans women in the trans roles: Cristina is played at different ages by Jedet, Daniela Santiago and Isabel Torres, and Valeria by Lola Rodríguez, who is trans.
In the 1990s, Cristina Ortiz, known as La Veneno, burst onto Spanish late-night television and became a national star, funny, blunt and unashamed. Years later, after she had faded from view, Valeria Vegas, a young journalism student coming to terms with her own transition, seeks her out, and the two women form a friendship that turns into a book.
The series moves between Cristina's hard childhood in a small village, her years in Madrid, her fame, and Valeria's present, and through them tells a history of LGBT life in Spain from the 1960s onward. It is loud, funny and tender, and it does not pretend her life was easy.
Why it matters. Veneno is about trans women, played by trans women, made by creators who said LGBT stories should be made with LGBT people. It gives Cristina Ortiz her full humanity, and it shows how a woman on a television screen can change the life of someone watching at home. Isabel Torres, who plays Cristina in her last years, had herself been the first trans person in the Canary Islands to legally change her name and gender.
Worth knowing. We did not find significant criticism in the sources we read. Torres died in 2022, which makes her performance here also a record of her work.
Content notes: a violent childhood and rejection, deadnaming, sex work, illness and death
Sort Of (2021, series)
Made by: Created by Zaiba Baig and Fab Filippo, who were also its showrunners and writers, for CBC, Canada; three seasons, 2021 to 2023. Baig, who is queer, transfeminine and Muslim, also stars as Sabi.
Sabi Mehboob is a [[nonbinary|non-binary]] millennial in Toronto, the child of Pakistani immigrants, who uses they/them pronouns and splits their days between bartending at an LGBTQ bar and nannying two kids for a busy couple. Sabi is about to move to Berlin with their best friend 7ven when the kids' mother, Bessy, has a serious accident, and Sabi decides to stay.
Episodes run about 20 minutes. The show cares less about big events than about the drift of daily life: a mother trying to understand her child, a complicated boyfriend, fights over the kids eating too much sugar, a friendship that has to stretch.
Why it matters. Sort Of does not treat Sabi's gender as the problem to be solved. It is a comedy where a non-binary child of immigrants is simply at the centre of an ordinary, messy life, co-created and played by a queer, transfeminine artist. Its gentle idea, in the network's own words, is that "each and every one of us is in transition." It won a Peabody Award.
Worth knowing. NPR's John Powers praised it for its modesty, which also tells you what it is not: there are no big twists, just small shifts. The co-creator and star now goes by Zaiba Baig, so older credits and many articles about the show use a different first name.
Content notes: a serious accident and a character in a coma, family tension over gender
Dead End: Paranormal Park (2022, series)
Made by: Created by Hamish Steele, adapted from his DeadEndia comics, produced by Blink Industries in London for Netflix; two seasons, both released in 2022. Barney, the lead, is voiced by Zach Barack, who is trans and Jewish like his character.
Barney, a gay, Jewish trans teenager, runs away from a difficult home and takes a summer job at Phoenix Parks, a theme park built around a Dolly Parton-like movie star. So does Norma, an anxious superfan with an encyclopedic knowledge of the star. The park's haunted house turns out to hide a way into the demon world, and a piece of a demon lord's soul ends up inside Barney's pug, Pugsley, who can suddenly talk.
It is an animated horror comedy with zombie mascots, demonic game show hosts, a musical episode and first crushes, aimed at a younger audience than the comics.
Why it matters. A trans boy is the lead of an all-ages cartoon, voiced by a trans actor, and being trans is part of him, not the whole plot: he has a crush, a dog, friends and demons to fight. Barack called playing a trans kid in a show for children "a dream come true." Norma's struggles are drawn from Steele's own life as an autistic person, and Paste's autistic critic found her written very authentically.
Worth knowing. Paste's Reuben Baron liked the writing but felt the animation lost the comics' visual charm, and noted that some darker elements were toned down. Before it aired, a group of US senators singled it out among children's shows they wanted content warnings on. Netflix cancelled it in January 2023; Steele pointed fans to the third and final DeadEndia book for some closure.
Content notes: an unaccepting family, demons and cartoon horror, anxiety
Classics that still matter
Older films that still come up in conversation and still reward watching. Each one comes with context: what was new about it at the time, and what reads differently now. The words people use on screen, and in reviews from the period, are often not the words people use today.
The Queen (1968, documentary film)
Made by: Directed by Frank Simon, United States, with Flawless Sabrina (Jack Doroshow), who ran the pageant, as host and narrator. Among the contestants are Rachel Harlow, who transitioned after the film, and Crystal LaBeija, who later founded the House of LaBeija.
In 1967, drag queens from across the United States came to New York's Town Hall for the Miss All-America Camp Beauty Contest, run by Flawless Sabrina. Frank Simon filmed it all: organising meetings, a trip to a costume supplier, rehearsals, and hotel-room talk about boyfriends, the Vietnam draft, and whether they would transition if they could. Then the pageant itself, with Andy Warhol among the judges.
When the results come in, not everyone agrees with them, and one contestant says so in words that are still quoted today.
Why it matters. It is one of the earliest films to let drag queens talk on camera about their lives, including their gender, at a time when, as Richard Brody notes in The New Yorker, drag itself was illegal in New York. You can watch people reaching for language about gender that did not exist yet. And Crystal LaBeija's moment is a direct line to the ballroom houses of Paris Is Burning and Pose.
Worth knowing. It is a document of 1967: the words people use about gender and about themselves are the words of that time, and drag, gay and trans lives are not separated the way they often are now. Harlow told Rolling Stone in 2019 that "many of the trans and drag stories that are coming to light now, spring in some way from The Queen."
Content notes: period language about gender and sexuality, talk of the military draft, partial nudity, an angry accusation of a fixed contest
Paris Is Burning (1990, documentary film)
Made by: Directed and produced by Jennie Livingston, United States, filmed in New York in the mid to late 1980s. Livingston said in 2020, "I now identify as genderqueer." The people on screen are Black and Latino gay men, drag queens and trans women of the ball scene, among them Dorian Corey, Pepper LaBeija, Venus Xtravaganza, Octavia St. Laurent and Willi Ninja.
In 1980s New York, Black and Latino queer and trans people built a world of their own: the balls, where contestants walk in categories judged on style, attitude and "realness", representing houses that work as chosen families, each led by a mother. Livingston spent years at the balls and recording interviews with the people who made them.
The film is part celebration, part oral history. It explains the language (houses, mothers, shade, reading, voguing) and lets its subjects talk, often very funnily, about money, race, gender, fame and how they survive.
Why it matters. It is the best-known record of a culture made by queer and trans people of colour, filmed while they could speak for themselves; most of them died in the decades after, from transphobic violence, poverty and AIDS. So much ballroom language has gone mainstream that it is worth hearing it from them first. It also shaped Pose, on which Livingston later worked. The Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry in 2016.
Worth knowing. It has been argued over since it came out. bell hooks questioned whether Livingston, a white, middle-class filmmaker, was offering the balls up as a spectacle. In 1993 some participants felt they had missed out on the film's earnings; their claims were dropped, but the producers shared about $55,000 among 13 of them. Livingston has said the film leaned toward performance and found family and left out much else.
Content notes: transphobic violence, including the killing of a woman in the film, poverty, AIDS, sex work, family rejection
Ma vie en rose (My Life in Pink) (1997, feature film)
Made by: Directed by Alain Berliner, written by Berliner and Chris Vander Stappen; a Belgian, French and British co-production, in French.
Ludovic, seven, has just moved with her family into a tidy suburb where the father's boss lives next door. Ludo is calm and certain: she is a girl, and a mix-up with chromosomes simply needs sorting out. She wears dresses, plans to marry her friend Jérôme, the boss's son, and escapes into a bright fantasy world ruled by Pam, a doll-like television princess.
The neighbours do not take it well, and as the pressure builds, her parents, who love her, struggle with what to do.
Why it matters. It takes a young child's certainty seriously and shows it largely from her side, through fantasy and colour rather than case notes. Writing for the BFI, Juliet Jacques called it one of the most sensitive trans films of the 1990s and praised Berliner's grasp of how simple, and how important, gender markers are for children. It won the Golden Globe for best foreign film.
Worth knowing. It was made and reviewed in 1997 terms: Roger Ebert, like many critics then, described Ludovic as a boy with a mistaken idea. Later critics such as Jacques write about Ludo as a girl, which is how this guide describes her. The film is gentle, but it does not hide how cruel adults can be.
Content notes: a community turning on a family, a child bullied and assaulted by other children, a child's suicide attempt, a parent hitting a child, a forced haircut
Todo sobre mi madre (All About My Mother) (1999, feature film)
Made by: Written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar; Spain and France, in Spanish. Agrado is played by Antonia San Juan and Lola by Toni Cantó.
Manuela, a nurse in Madrid, loses her teenage son in an accident on the night of his seventeenth birthday. She goes to Barcelona to find the boy's other parent, Lola, a trans woman who never knew he existed. There she finds her old friend Agrado, a trans woman and sex worker, and is drawn into a circle of women: a famous stage actress, the actress's troubled lover, and a young nun who works at a shelter for sex workers.
It is a melodrama about grief, motherhood and the families people make, full of theatre, colour and jokes.
Why it matters. Agrado is warm, sharp and completely at ease with herself, and she gets the film's best-loved scene: a funny, proud monologue about what it has cost her to become who she is, ending on the idea that "you are more authentic the more you resemble what you've dreamed of being." As Rebecca Bodenheimer wrote for RogerEbert.com, a trans woman judging a cis woman's femininity, rather than the reverse, was a position trans women were rarely allowed.
Worth knowing. The film is kinder to Agrado than to Lola, its other trans woman, who stays mostly offscreen and whom Bodenheimer describes as a "reckless and narcissistic" presence. Reviews at the time, including Variety's and The New York Times's, used words and pronouns for both women that most trans people would not use today.
Content notes: the sudden death of a teenager, a trans woman beaten up, sex work, HIV and AIDS, drug addiction
Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001, feature film)
Made by: Written and directed by John Cameron Mitchell, who also plays Hedwig, adapted from the 1998 stage musical he created with Stephen Trask, who wrote the songs; United States.
Hedwig grew up in East Berlin, fell for an American soldier and, to marry him and get out, agreed under pressure to something that was done badly and that gives the film its title. Abandoned in a Kansas trailer park, she falls for Tommy, a general's son, who leaves her and becomes a stadium rock star with songs she wrote.
Now Hedwig tours cheap chain restaurants with her band, the Angry Inch, shadowing Tommy's tour and telling her story in songs about love, gender and wholeness. It is a glam rock musical: funny, furious, with an animated sequence, a sing-along and big numbers.
Why it matters. Many trans and gender-nonconforming people have found something of themselves in Hedwig, a glamorous, wounded, angry performer whose gender fits nobody's box, and the creators have said they are glad trans people found resonance in her. It belongs to a rare category, the original rock musical, and its songs make an argument about gender and wholeness that still lands.
Worth knowing. Hedwig is not written as a trans woman. In 2020, after trans activists argued that a trans actor should have been cast in a Sydney production, Mitchell and Trask said the character's gender journey is forced on "a young fem gay boy" by a boyfriend and a government, and that the role is closer to drag, "a mask available to all." Some trans people read Hedwig differently.
Content notes: coercion by a partner and a state, abandonment, sex work, sexual content
Famous but criticised
You have probably heard of these, and many trans viewers have mixed or hostile feelings about them. The best-known complaint is about casting: cis actors, usually men, playing trans women, while trans actors struggle to get the same roles.
In 2018, Scarlett Johansson withdrew from Rub & Tug, a planned film in which she was to play Dante "Tex" Gill, after criticism from trans actors including Trace Lysette, and said in her statement that she understood "why many feel he should be portrayed by a transgender person".
Casting is not the only issue. Some of these works turn a trans character's body into a twist, one was made by a trans director and boycotted anyway, and one set off a public dispute about who gets credit for trans history. They are here because you will be asked about them, because some are still worth seeing with open eyes, and because the arguments are part of the history.
The Crying Game (1992, feature film)
Made by: Written and directed by Neil Jordan, United Kingdom. Stephen Rea plays Fergus, Forest Whitaker plays Jody, and Jaye Davidson, a newcomer with no acting experience, plays Dil.
A thriller that turns into a love story. Fergus, a volunteer in an IRA unit in Northern Ireland, is set to guard Jody, a kidnapped Black British soldier, and the two men form an unlikely bond. Jody asks Fergus to look in on his lover, Dil, in London if anything happens to him.
Fergus later goes to London under a new name, finds Dil, and falls for her while trying to stay ahead of his past. The film deals with race, sexuality and identity, and it was made on a shaky patchwork of funding.
Why it matters. It was a box-office hit and an Oscar film with a trans woman in a lead role: it won Best Original Screenplay, and Davidson was nominated. Its central scene was later parodied in Ace Ventura, so even if you have never seen it, you have probably met jokes that come from it. The documentary Disclosure treats it as one of the films that loom largest in how trans women have been seen on screen, which makes it worth knowing, whatever you decide about watching it.
Worth knowing. In the US, Miramax sold the film on a secret: a former executive told The Hollywood Reporter they called "journalist by journalist" to keep the secret. The secret was that Dil is trans, so her body, and her lover's disgust at it, became the twist. Oliver Whitney, writing in Vulture, places it in the "trans deception" tradition. The documentary Disclosure (2020) spends time on the scene; director Sam Feder says contributors found it disturbing, while Zackary Drucker says in the film that at the time she did not see the problem and just saw a beautiful woman. Feder's view is that you can "love things critically."
Content notes: kidnapping and gun violence, a trans woman met with disgust by a partner and accidentally struck, nudity, suicidal thoughts
Boys Don't Cry (1999, feature film)
Made by: Directed by Kimberly Peirce, written by Peirce and Andy Bienen, United States. Hilary Swank, who is cisgender, plays Brandon Teena, and Chloë Sevigny plays Lana Tisdel.
A dramatisation of the life of Brandon Teena, a young trans man in rural Nebraska who was murdered in 1993. Brandon moves to Falls City, falls in with a group of young people there, and falls in love with Lana.
The film follows what happens when the people around him find out he is trans. It is based on real events, and Peirce fictionalised parts of the story, so treat it as her version of Brandon's life rather than a record of it.
Why it matters. For many audiences in 1999 it was the first sensitive portrayal of a trans person they had seen. IndieWire's Jude Dry writes that in many ways it kicked off the conversation about trans representation in film that is still going on. Swank says people have written to her and come up to her in tears to thank her. In 2019 it was added to the US National Film Registry.
Worth knowing. In November 2016, Reed College students protested Peirce's campus visit, disrupting her talk after a screening. According to Willamette Week, they objected to a non-trans director profiting from depicting violence against trans people, to Swank being cast instead of a trans actor, and to the graphic rape scene; the college criticised how the talk was disrupted. In 2019 Swank said she was "happy that times are evolving" and that people get to tell their own stories. Other objections were about accuracy: Peirce cut Philip DeVine, a Black man killed alongside Brandon, saying she had no room, and the real Lana Tisdel sued over how she was portrayed.
Content notes: transphobic harassment and violence, a trans man forcibly exposed, a graphic rape scene, police questioning a victim about his gender, murder (based on real events)
Transamerica (2005, feature film)
Made by: Written and directed by Duncan Tucker, United States. Felicity Huffman plays Bree, with Kevin Zegers as Toby. To prepare, Huffman worked with two trans women, Andrea James and Calpernia Addams, who coached her voice.
Bree, a trans woman in Los Angeles, is close to a long-awaited step in her transition when a call comes from a New York jail: a teenage runaway named Toby is looking for a parent he has never met, and that parent is Bree. Her therapist will not give her approval to go ahead until she faces it.
So Bree flies to New York, bails Toby out without telling him who she is, and the two end up driving across the country together, with a stop at the family she has long been estranged from.
Why it matters. It is a road comedy-drama with a trans woman as its lead, not a victim or a villain, and Huffman was nominated for an Oscar for the role. Writing in IndieWire in 2014, Dominic Clarke called it "so far ahead of its time" that the film world still had not caught up, noted how rarely films show an ordinary person who happens to be trans, and praised how humanely Tucker treats Bree, including when her family rejects her.
Worth knowing. We found less published criticism of this film by trans writers than of the others in this group, and most of it concerns casting. Paris Lees, a trans woman writing in The Independent in 2014, called Huffman's performance an "approximation of a trans woman" and singled out a scene she found implausible, even though the producers had worked with trans consultants. Huffman herself said in 2014 that she understands and supports the view that trans actors should play trans roles, because trans people have been "marginalized for a long time."
Content notes: deadnaming, a family's transphobic rejection including an invasive moment from Bree's mother, references to child sexual abuse and a parent's suicide in Toby's past, sex work, drug use
Dallas Buyers Club (2013, feature film)
Made by: Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, written by Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack, United States. Matthew McConaughey plays Ron Woodroof, and Jared Leto, who is not trans, plays Rayon, a fictional trans woman.
Based on the true story of Ron Woodroof, a straight Texas electrician diagnosed with HIV in the mid-1980s. He starts bringing unapproved AIDS drugs into the US and distributing them through a members' club, in defiance of the medical establishment.
In hospital he meets Rayon, a trans woman living with AIDS, and after a hostile start she becomes his business partner and, slowly, his friend. Woodroof was real; Rayon was invented for the film.
Why it matters. It is a widely seen film about the early AIDS crisis in the US, and it gave a trans woman's story a major place in a film enjoyed by millions. Leto won a Golden Globe and then an Oscar for it. Paris Lees, a trans woman, went in expecting to be offended and was not: she said it was great, that Leto had her in tears, and that you should probably see it, with an eyebrow raised.
Worth knowing. The criticism was mostly about who played Rayon and how she was written. As the film opened, a Los Angeles Times opinion piece by Susan Rohwer argued the role should have gone to a trans actor, quoting Shawna Virago of the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival calling it a missed opportunity. Leto's Golden Globes speech, calling Rayon a "beautiful creature" and joking about shaving his legs, drew anger. Paris Lees wrote that Rayon is less a person than "a function", silent while even her friends call her "he". At a 2014 festival a woman told Leto "trans-misogyny does not deserve an award"; he argued back, then talked with her afterwards.
Content notes: illness and death from AIDS, drug use, constant misgendering, homophobic and transphobic hostility
Transparent (2014, series)
Made by: Created by Joey Soloway for Amazon, United States; five seasons, 2014 to 2019. Soloway is non-binary, uses they/them, and was credited as Jill Soloway while the show was made. Jeffrey Tambor, who is cisgender, played Maura until he was fired in 2018. Trans people who worked on the show include staff writer Our Lady J, producers Zackary Drucker and Rhys Ernst, and actor Trace Lysette.
The Pfeffermans are a Jewish family in Los Angeles. When Maura, a retired professor and the parent of three adult children, comes out as a trans woman, everyone's life shifts, and she and her children do not always handle it gracefully.
The show follows the whole family, often with flashbacks into its history, and ends with a musical finale in 2019. Soloway loosely based Maura on their own parent's transition.
Why it matters. At its height it was held up, in The Hollywood Reporter's words, as "a beacon of social progressivism" and praised by groups like GLAAD, and it won Golden Globes. It also tried to change who made the show: Soloway chose Our Lady J from a group of trans women applying to write for it, and trans people worked in front of and behind the camera. If you care about how the industry started hiring trans talent, it is part of that history.
Worth knowing. Casting Tambor, a cis man, was questioned from the start; at an early screening an audience member compared it to blackface. Accepting his 2016 Emmy, Tambor asked the industry to "give transgender talent a chance" and said he "would not be unhappy were I the last cisgender male to play a female transgender on television." The same year Soloway called it "absolutely unacceptable" to cast a cis man as a trans woman. In late 2017 his former assistant Van Barnes and actor Trace Lysette, both trans women, accused Tambor of sexual harassment. He denied their accounts, and he was fired from the show in February 2018.
Content notes: misgendering and deadnaming, transphobic exclusion from women's spaces, discussion of suicidal thoughts, family conflict
The Danish Girl (2015, feature film)
Made by: Directed by Tom Hooper, screenplay by Lucinda Coxon, based on David Ebershoff's 2000 novel; United Kingdom and United States. Eddie Redmayne, a cis man, plays Lili Elbe, and Alicia Vikander plays Gerda Wegener.
A romantic drama set in 1920s Copenhagen and Paris. Gerda and her spouse are both painters. One day Gerda asks her spouse to stand in for a model who is running late, and that small request opens a door: the person Gerda married begins to live as Lili Elbe.
The film follows Lili's transition and what it asks of both women and their marriage. It comes to Lili's life through a novel that fictionalised her heavily, so it is a version of her story, not the story.
Why it matters. It put a trans woman's life at the centre of a big awards film, and it is how many people first heard of Lili Elbe. Vikander, who won an Oscar for playing Gerda, said in 2025 that it already feels "extremely dated" but that it got the subject "at least discussed". Even Casey Plett, who disliked it, mentions a trans woman she knows who loved it.
Worth knowing. Trans critics were hard on it. Carol Grant, writing in IndieWire as a trans woman early in her own transition, called it "regressive, reductive and harmful", arguing that Hooper's camera leers at Lili's clothes and body and reduces her womanhood to stereotype. Writer Casey Plett, in The Walrus, found the script "atrocious and boring", objected to an invented scene of Lili being beaten, and said a trans woman should have played her. The film also takes many liberties with Elbe's real life. In 2021 Redmayne told The Times that he would not take the role now: "I made that film with the best intentions, but I think it was a mistake."
Content notes: a transphobic street attack, psychiatric mistreatment including a threat of being committed, misgendering, nudity, medical settings
The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson (2017, documentary film)
Made by: Directed by David France, who co-wrote it with Mark Blane, United States. It follows Victoria Cruz, a trans woman and investigator with the New York City Anti-Violence Project. France knew Johnson and covered her death as a journalist.
Marsha P. Johnson, a veteran of the Stonewall uprising who co-founded the activist group STAR with Sylvia Rivera, was found in the Hudson River in 1992. Police ruled it a suicide; many of the people who knew her never accepted that.
The film follows Victoria Cruz as she reopens the questions around Johnson's death, visiting old friends and running into closed doors, and weaves in archival footage of Johnson and Rivera from their years of organising.
Why it matters. It put Johnson and Rivera, in their own voices and on film, in front of a very large audience, and it connects Johnson's death to how little attention violence against trans people still gets. Cruz carries it: IndieWire's Eric Kohn describes a trans woman investigator who never slows down. If you want to see and hear Johnson rather than only read about her, the film gathers a lot of footage of her.
Worth knowing. As it reached Netflix, Tourmaline (then known as Reina Gossett), a Black trans filmmaker who had spent years researching Johnson, accused France of benefiting from her archival work and a grant application for her own Johnson film, and of profiting from trans lives while she borrowed money for rent. France denied taking her work, saying he had researched the story for years. He acknowledged the far heavier obstacles she faces as a trans woman of colour and said "it is wrong that our projects have not received equal attention." A 2018 investigation by The Advocate found that France had licensed most of his archive footage from other sources, but that his use of 14 seconds of footage he first saw at a 2015 presentation by Tourmaline supported her claim. Tourmaline has framed the dispute as being about who profits from the work of trans women of colour while they go uncredited.
Content notes: the unexplained death of Marsha P. Johnson, police indifference, violence against trans people, grief
Girl (2018, feature film)
Made by: Directed by Lukas Dhont, written by Dhont and Angelo Tijssens; Belgium, in Dutch and French. Lara is played by Victor Polster, who is not trans. The film was inspired by Nora Monsecour, a Belgian professional dancer and trans woman, who worked with Dhont on it from the start.
Lara, a 15-year-old trans girl, gets a trial place at a demanding ballet school in Antwerp and moves there with her little brother and her father, who supports her without hesitation.
The film stays very close to Lara: the hours of pointe work, the pain in her body, her impatience for her transition to move forward, and how hard she is on herself.
Why it matters. It won the Caméra d'Or for best first feature and the Queer Palm at Cannes. For Monsecour it is her story: she wrote that making it helped her accept herself, and that it shows the loving home she was lucky to have. It is also a clear case of trans critics and the trans woman whose life inspired a film seeing the same work in opposite ways, which is worth knowing before you decide whether to watch.
Worth knowing. Several trans critics saw it very differently from the critics at Cannes. Oliver Whitney, in The Hollywood Reporter, called it a danger to the trans community, citing "a disturbing fascination with trans bodies", a camera that keeps pressing in on Lara's lower body, a graphic self-harm scene, and a harmful message about transition. Critics also questioned casting a cis actor in a story told by two cis men. Monsecour replied in the same paper that it "tells my story in a way that doesn't lie" and that dismissing it because Dhont and the lead are cis "offends me". Dhont said "we all want trans talent on screen", but defended casting on empathy.
Content notes: graphic self-harm, repeated nudity focused on Lara's body, transphobic bullying, deadnaming by a family member, physical pain from training
Adam (2019, feature film)
Made by: Directed by Rhys Ernst, a trans filmmaker, from a screenplay by Ariel Schrag adapting her 2014 novel, United States. Nicholas Alexander plays Adam, and the film was made with several trans people in its cast.
In the summer of 2006, Adam, a shy straight teenager, goes to stay with his older sister Casey in New York, where her world is queer and trans. At a party he meets Gillian, a lesbian, who assumes he is a trans man.
Adam does not correct her, and keeps up the lie as their relationship grows and as he is welcomed into spaces where lesbian and trans communities meet and argue.
Why it matters. It is a film by a trans director that takes a long-running harmful idea, that trans people deceive others, and turns it around. Oliver Whitney, a trans critic who went in wary because of the novel, found that it cleverly subverts the "trans deception" story, pokes at the pressure on trans people to disclose, and shows a cis young man learning a healthier masculinity from a trans man.
Worth knowing. The premise drew a boycott before most people had seen the film: petitions with over 6,000 signatures called it homophobic and transphobic, building on criticism of Schrag's novel, which reviewer Tom Leger called "strange, hurtful, and bizarre" in how it treats trans men. One trans extra also said he was misgendered on set. Ernst said the film departs from the book in important ways, Whitney noted that it drops the novel's most criticised scene, and Ernst added that "there's a war on nuance right now." On the set allegations, he said somebody "could have accidentally been misgendered" despite training for the crew.
Content notes: a cis character lying about being trans, misgendering, period-specific arguments about excluding trans women from women's spaces
Emilia Pérez (2024, feature film)
Made by: Written and directed by Jacques Audiard, France, in Spanish. Karla Sofía Gascón, a Spanish trans woman, plays the title role, with Zoe Saldaña as the lawyer Rita and Selena Gomez.
A crime musical that its director calls an opera. Rita, a struggling Mexico City lawyer who wins cases against her own conscience, gets a secret and very well-paid job offer. The client is a feared cartel boss who wants her help to fake a death, disappear, and transition.
The film mixes songs, melodrama and cartel violence at full volume, and follows what happens after the new life begins.
Why it matters. It was a huge awards film: it won the Jury Prize at Cannes and four Golden Globes, earned 13 Oscar nominations, and Gascón became the first openly trans actor nominated for an acting Oscar. Whatever you make of the film, that nomination was a first, and the fights around the film are now part of recent trans film history.
Worth knowing. Trans critics were among its sharpest. GLAAD called it "a profoundly retrograde portrayal of a trans woman" and noted that the early praise at Cannes came from critics who were not trans; Drew Burnett Gregory, a trans woman writing in Autostraddle, called it "a glorious disaster" built on familiar tropes. In Mexico many viewers mocked its stilted Spanish, its stereotypes and the fact that just one main actor was Mexican; Audiard answered that it is "an opera, not a criticism of anything about Mexico." In early 2025, Gascón's old posts about Muslims, George Floyd and Oscar diversity resurfaced. She said she was deeply sorry; Audiard called them "hateful".
Content notes: cartel violence and killings, kidnapping, the search for forcibly disappeared people, other characters recoiling from a trans woman's body, misgendering
Where to go from here
Some of these are easier to watch with other trans people than alone, and the conversation afterwards is half the point. If you are still looking for those people, how to make trans friends and how to find a trans support group are good places to start.
For the history behind a few of these films, read our pieces on Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera and Lili Elbe. If you would rather read than watch, the companion guide is books by trans and non-binary authors.
A list like this ages. New work comes out, people change how they describe themselves, and critical opinion moves. If you spot a mistake, a credit we got wrong, or something that belongs here, the contact page reaches us.
Wren · Editor
Wren is the name the T4TSpace blog is published under. The posts are written by the small team that builds the app, and signed with one name so the voice stays the same from one piece to the next.