Last year saw the protection of marginalized Americans continue to diminish. A U.S. federal appeals court lifted the injunction that blocked the Trump administration from ending Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood. This resulted in Americans losing access to insurance for the live-saving services Planned Parenthood offers. Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood resumed last week, but these decisions coincide with a rise in book bans featuring LGBTQ2S+ and racialized stories, as well as an increase in ICE agents racially profiling civilians to fatal ends. A growing fear looms of what the future holds for society’s most vulnerable. With the visibility of marginalized lives becoming increasingly dangerous, how can people explore their identities freely and safely? This is a question director Clement Virgo’s new film Steal Away poses.

Fusing dystopia, coming of age and psychological horror, Steal Away captures the emotional terrors of adolescence under an authoritarian regime. The story juxtaposes the journeys of Fanny (played by Angourie Rice), a privileged but sheltered white teen navigating a sexual awakening, and Cécile (Mallori Johnson), a Black migrant embracing sexual liberation. As the girls develop a complicated bond, disturbing truths about Fanny’s family emerge that place her and Cécile’s lives in jeopardy.

The film is loosely inspired by Karolyn Smardz Frost’s non-fiction book Steal Away Home, which is set in antebellum Kentucky. Steal Away pivots from its source material by taking place in an ambiguous time and location. In the film, racialized folks are heavily surveilled based on an intolerance toward the undocumented. Sex in this community is stigmatized unless its citizens are in a heterosexual marriage or planning to have children. By drawing parallels to real-life events from our past and present, Steal Away shows that the excitement and pain of identity exploration remain timeless.

What struck me about the film was the queer subtext within Fanny’s character. Raised by her single mother Florence (Lauren Lee Smith), Fanny is torn between following her family’s restrictive lifestyle that promotes patriarchal values and minimizes her free will, or pivoting from these norms to define her own identity. According to psychologist Vivienne Cass, queer folks navigate sexual exploration in six different stages known as the Identity Model. This includes Identity Confusion, Identity Comparison, Identity Tolerance, Identity Acceptance, Identity Pride and Identity Synthesis. Fanny’s internal conflict at the start of the film represents Identity Confusion as people in this stage question whether their self-image aligns with cisheteronormativity.

What Virgo and co-writer Tamara Faith Berger’s script captures well are the anxieties of feeling different from dominant society. This is evident when Fanny menstruates for the first time on her 16th birthday. Lacking the emotional safety to share this with her mother, Fanny represses the shame of her period to protect herself. This parallels the experience many of us endure when our queerness emerges for the first time. Without examples normalizing our feelings, we suffer silently based on the false belief that we’re the only ones enduring these hardships.

This tension reaches a head upon the arrival of Cécile and her mother Mary (Isabelle Menal), Congolese migrants escaping the war of their homeland. Florence welcomes the women into her home, having previously helped other Black refugees seek asylum. Cécile is the first to recognize Fanny’s emerging womanhood once she spots her bleeding. This exchange forces Fanny to face the difficult truth about her evolving identity rather than deny it. Contrasting Fanny’s naiveté with Cécile’s self-awareness allows the film to highlight the differences in their lived experiences while navigating sexual maturity.

The next stage of the Identity Model, Identity Comparison, posits that LGBTQ2S+ folks struggle to accept their identities because it defies societal norms. Between her Afro-futuristic hairstyles and her wardrobe merging streetwear with traditional Congolese prints, Cécile is unapologetic about her Black identity. Such individuality inspires and intimidates Fanny, who struggles to embrace her own self-image. This is exacerbated further when Fanny learns that Cécile is more sexually experienced than she is. Feeling inadequate, Fanny emulates Cécilie to deflect from her own insecurities. Wearing Cécile’s clothes in secret, modelling her hair after Cécile’s and having straight sex like Cécile, Fanny adopts an avatar that soothes her need for belonging.

I admire Fanny’s infatuation with Cécile because a Black girl is centred as desirable. Film and television have a history of exploring Sapphic connections in a way that sidelines Black characters as love interests. Degrassi and Skins found “straight” characters Paige Michalchuk and Mini McGuinness attracted to their white rivals rather than their Black best friends. Pretty Little Liars killed off Emily Fields’s Black girlfriend Maya St. Germain to pursue romance storylines with white partners. Meanwhile, desirable Black girls in media—like the Clovers from Bring It On or Willow from The Sex Lives of College Girls—are merely supporting characters without their own story arcs. These examples run the risk of erasing Black girls within the beauty hierarchy of queer media. For that alone, I appreciate Steal Away’s depiction of a white girl’s infatuation with a Black girl who is comfortable in her own identity.

In an essay for CBC, Virgo and Berger described Fanny’s relationship with Cécile as obsessive. I don’t totally agree: I perceived Fanny’s admiration as an escape from her own internal pain. Throughout my own adolescence, I tried to divorce myself from my queerness because the isolation of being different felt emotionally suffocating. I relate to Fanny’s struggles because it’s tougher to legitimize your own identity without support in place. Having suppressed her authentic self to survive oppressive norms, it’s only natural that Fanny is taken by the one person in her life brave enough to defy authoritative expectations of girlhood without fear.

Fanny minimizing her own identity proves consequential by straining her relationship with Cécile as the film progresses. This changes once Fanny discovers that her mother’s allyship to Black migrants was a ruse. The migrants never became documented citizens as they were subjected to human trafficking and sexual slavery by the government. This includes Cécile’s own mother. The revelation radicalizes Fanny to break from her family’s violent history to protect Cécile from government capture. This propels the final act of Steal Away as the girls become fugitives once Fanny assists Cécile in escaping to the north.

Another stage in the Identity Model is Identity Acceptance. Here, queer and trans people embrace their identities within cisheteronormative structures. Fanny advocating for her values that countered her own bloodline marked the first time she legitimized her own perspective. This was crystalized further after the girls successfully fled from a government agent, leading to Fanny professing her love for Cécile. While Cécile doesn’t reciprocate those feelings, the declaration allows Fanny to stand firmly as her authentic self without the fear of negative judgment interfering.

Steal Away ends with Fanny and Cécile separating for good. Cécile’s dreams of asylum up north are fulfilled, while Fanny is left behind in her homeland. Identity Pride is a stage in the Identity Model where LGBTQ2S+ folks defend their sexuality against prejudice while advocating for their own livelihood. It’s easy to interpret the film’s conclusion as bleak, but there’s a joy to Fanny finally achieving liberation for herself against societal resistance. We can’t control how we’re perceived upon sharing our queer truths, but that shouldn’t deter us from living an authentic life.

Having rebelled against her community, Fanny’s fate in the film is ambiguous. We will never know if she achieves Identity Tolerance by building communal ties with fellow queer folks. We will never know if Fanny reaches Identity Synthesis by fully integrating her queerness into her life. The inconclusiveness of Fanny’s queer journey mirrors the civil unrest LGBTQ2S+ folks in America contend with today.

It’s an ongoing question whether the dismantling of queer and trans rights will be overturned, which is quite devastating. While small developments have been made, our protection over time isn’t a guaranteed reality. Steal Away reminds viewers of how unfair it is for marginalized folks to shrink themselves to survive in life. As we continue to combat systemic adversities, the decision for LGBTQ2S+ folks to celebrate and advocate for our identities remains a bold necessity to cherish the one life we have.