After discovering case files from the UCLA gender clinic from the 1950s, a group of trans actors confronts the legacy of young trans women being forced to choose between honesty and access. Agnes, the pioneering, pseudonymized, transgender woman who participated in Harold Garfinkel’s gender health research at UCLA in the 1960s, has long stood as a figurehead of trans history. In this rigorous cinematic exercise that blends fiction and nonfiction, director Chase Joynt explores where and how her platform has become a pigeonhole. Framing Agnes endeavors to widen the frame through which trans history is viewed — one that has remained too narrow to capture the multiplicity of experiences eclipsed by Agnes’. Through a collaborative practice of reimagination, an impressive lineup of trans stars take on vividly rendered, impeccably vintage reenactments, bringing to life groundbreaking artifacts of trans healthcare.

Content advisory: strobing effects
Against the world’s resource-rich, who mine Africa’s land and peoples to power global currency, Rwanda’s university students are in open revolt, demanding “No Authority!” Neptune (played by both Cheryl Isheja and Elvis Ngabo), an intersex hacker fleeing sexual violence, is drawn to their late mother’s home. There they awaken and encounter Matalusa (Bertrand “Kaya Free” Ninteretse), a coltan miner sent on a mission while mourning the murder of his brother. In their love they will find the key encoded. An adventure into anti-narrative as Black diasporic treatise, Neptune Frost — executive produced by Ottawa-based Cayuga and Mohawk group The Halluci Nation (f.k.a. A Tribe Called Red) — tells of a generation of dreamers escaping the psycho-social wreckage of colonization, genocide, and the residual brutalities of global extractive industries. Together and apart, these dreamers journey over lush green landscapes into digital worlds, unaware of the destination they are being led to, sounding the beat of anti-colonial struggle to connect rhythms of global uprising.

After a string of unsuccessful and awkward encounters with women, Ben goes “back on the dick.” Cicada follows Ben, a young bisexual man, as he comes out to the world and develops an intense relationship with Sam, a man of color struggling with deep wounds of his own. As the summer progresses and their intimacy grows, Ben’s past crawls to the surface. Matthew Fifer’s sexy debut feature examines buried traumas, cultural divides and religious stigma with dark humor and tender introspection. A sexy and searing act of gay self-analysis.

In a fractured, dream-like world, a transgender actor struggles with what it means to be seen after the beloved captain of his lesbian bowling league dies and a mysterious stranger shows up at the funeral. X (Will Krisanda) is a white transgender actor who struggles with what it means to be seen, both as a representation of transgender identity on screen, and interpersonally as the beloved outsider to his queer community of amateur-bowling lesbians who meet as The Lavender League. When the captain of the Lavender League, Susan, asks X to speak at her funeral, X finds himself thrown into a time of not only intense grief, but also of desire. At the funeral, an unexpected and handsome stranger arrives. No one recognizes him. Alex and X inherit Susan’s hand-drawn map of her desired location for her ashes and lead their community through a hot journey through the desert.