Something changed in trans film in 2024. You might even say something is not the same. And trans filmmakers are through with playing by the rules of someone else’s game.
Okay, so Wicked is not a “trans” film, per se. But a story about being ostracized for being different, resisting fascist governments and standing up to misinformation? That is certainly on the nose to the trans experience, particularly a post-U.S.-election late 2024.
Thankfully, unlike in past years, trans audiences weren’t reliant on simple metaphor or allegory to convey our experiences on the silver screen this year. Call it a “tipping point” or a banner year or a watershed moment, but in terms of mainstream conversation, it’s fair to say that more people were talking about trans films and filmmakers in 2024 than ever before.
From I Saw The TV Glow to Will & Harper, The People’s Joker to Emilia Pérez, trans lives and stories and filmmakers hit the mainstream in an unprecedented way this year. There were also indie film fest darlings like TIFF’s Really Happy Someday, documentary standouts like Any Other Way and innovative trans stories told in action flicks like Monkey Man.
In many years past, just one of these successes would be a highlight—be it the innovation and rebellion of The People’s Joker or the mainstream appeal of Will & Harper. But the sheer volume and diversity of trans cinema in 2024 poses a fascinating question as to where we go from here, particularly as Emilia Pérez’s Karla Sofía Gascón is poised to become the first openly trans person nominated for an acting Oscar, entrenching this film in history books as a watershed moment for trans people.
Who should we—both people of trans experience and those telling our stories—be making these movies for? And as we enter a new era where trans people and the art we make faces even higher scrutiny by our governments and the world at large, what comes next?
Arguably two of the most talked-about trans films of 2024 would, save for their trans content, would likely never be put into conversation together. One is a weirdo alt-comedy semi-autobiographical opus based on Batman comics. The other is a cis-het French auteur’s crime-drama musical adaptation of an opera about the Mexican cartel scene. Let’s actually just talk about The People’s Joker and Emilia Pérez.
I feel like I’ve been writing about or recommending The People’s Joker to people for a lifetime at this point. The story of a trans comedian (played by Vera Drew) who becomes the Joker is peppered with meta humour, experimental editing, low-budget visual effects and a host of hyper-specific references and memes for both trans people and Batman fans (and of course trans Batman fans). I was part of the lucky few who saw the original Midnight Madness screening at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2022, before copyright disputes forced the film and its auteur writer-director-star Drew out of wider distribution. In 2024, the film emerged with a wider theatrical release, a pile of critical success and new conversation about the potential for trans cinema.
It’s difficult to describe how impactful it was seeing The People’s Joker for the first time in that theatre at midnight . I left fully giddy and deeply impacted—conscious that I’d just had a cinematic experience that could never really be replicated. The film follows a long history of trans remixing of canon, from fanfiction to cosplay to the reclamation of Harry Potter from its queen TERF creator. Taking an existing franchise and superimposing our own narrative and life stories onto it? Nothing is more trans than that, baby.
The People’s Joker is by its very essence a shaggy movie. At the TIFF screening Drew joked that she had finished the final cut only earlier this morning, and it does look like it was made for $0.50 and a few phoned-in favours from friends. And yet, something about its specificity and innovation—coupled with a rights fight against an easy villain in Warner Brothers—shot the film and Drew into a stratosphere of public awareness that weirdo indie trans films never had before. Drew just won the Breakthrough Director Award at the Gotham Awards, and this very indie trans film is making its way onto a slew of year-end “best of” lists.
Now let’s contrast that with Emilia Pérez, a Cannes festival standout from a critically acclaimed French auteur Jacques Adiard currently streaming on Netflix. Starring Spanish actress Karla Sofía Gascón as the titular character, Emilia Pérez is a lengthy epic about a cartel leader who transitions to start a new life as a woman, but has her past catch up with her. Gascón—alongside co-stars Zoe Saldana, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz—took home the Best Actress award at Cannes, and the film won the coveted Golden Lion. On the heels of a big showing at the Golden Globe nominations last week, the film is a supposed lock for a pile of Oscar noms, including for Gascón in what would notably be the first case of an openly trans person garnering an acting nomination at the Academy Awards.
One point that The People’s Joker and Emilia Pérez share is that neither would ever be accused of being subtle. And one Emilia Pérez sequence—a musical number about vaginoplasties set in a Thai hospital—actually could reasonably appear in TPJ. But unlike Drew’s film, Emilia Pérez is incredibly self-serious and a familiar narrative we’ve seen before from cis storytellers taking on trans stories about being one’s true self. The film has also faced harsh criticism from many trans critics, calling out its dated use of language, stereotypical plot and lack of involvement of trans creatives behind the camera (Xtra critic Veronica Esposito was middling in her review where she humorously compared the movie to an overloaded collapsing gingerbread house—a fair comparison!).
But still, I can’t help but admit that it is exciting to see an operatic musical about a trans woman get the Oscar bait treatment in marketing and coverage by mainstream press. Maybe it’s because as a trans film fan I’ve spent my whole life watching the Eddie Redmaynes and Jared Letos of the world garner acclaim for appropriating trans stories. It will be thrilling if Gascón gets nominated, or even wins, because of the history she will make and the trail she will blaze for trans actors who come after her. But at the same time, it’s such a bummer that this film—made by a weird French dude who questionably handles not only the trans issues but also its Mexican setting and characters—is the film that will get that place in the history books, and be remembered as the standard-bearer for trans cinema in 2024.
It’s not just who is making these movies, though that is certainly part of it. Drew’s film feels made for trans people—for anyone who knows what a toxic transmasc boyfriend is like, who can relate to the oppression of the state and society and who loves to joke about DIY HRT. Audiard’s film, on the other hand, is designed to inspire empathy, connection or … something. But not in trans people. It’s very clearly not for us. The longer I’ve sat with Emilia Pérez, the less I’ve liked it and part of that comes from the missed opportunity. With all of that money and influence and power, this is what they made? This is the film that will give us our first openly trans Best Actress nominee?
I keep thinking about what Drew could’ve done with that opportunity and support. Or Jane Schoenbrun, whose excellent I Saw the TV Glow falls somewhere between the two in terms of budget and scale, but certainly veers much closer to The People’s Joker in terms of speaking to the deeply human and personal specificities of the trans experience.
But then again, what even is trans film? Sure, both of these films qualify, as do I Saw the TV Glow and smaller indie fare like Elliot Page’s Close to You or the TIFF standout Really Happy Someday. But what about my current personal favourite film of the year, The Substance? Coralie Fargeat’s body horror experience—and it is an experience!—isn’t directly about taking hormones or changing your name, but I could argue that its themes of monstrosity and physical existence reflect deeply on specific parts of the trans experience that a film like Emilia Pérez only scratches the surface of. And as I mentioned at the top, the same can be said for Wicked, or Love Lies Bleeding or a host of other not explicitly “trans” films.
Just because a film has a trans person doesn’t make it a trans film. And often, the film with the trans person in it isn’t even for us. Look at Will & Harper, a perfectly enjoyable documentary about comedian Will Ferrell taking a road trip with his best friend, writer Harper Steele, after she comes out as a trans woman. Sure, I was moved by it. I shed a little tear. But I don’t think it has anything particularly new or interesting to say about transness in America in 2024 that hasn’t already been raised in other media (the excellent drag TV series We’re Here comes to mind).
The history books are going to remember Emilia Pérez, even if it is a bonkers movie with questionable politics and perspective on transness. The best thing we can hope for is that its success, and particularly Gascón’s, will open more doors for the Schoenbruns and Drews of the world to tell more trans stories, and that trans stories on screen will not only be told for the sympathetic cis audiences seeking inspiration but for the messy reality of trans existence we will continue to inhabit.
Trans film in 2024 was wide and big and complex. And I hope we remember it’s more than just a single line in the history books.
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