For The Girls: introducing the 6 short films centering trans-femmes at BFI Flare 2025
Tam Omond reviews the groundbreaking, genre-defying shorts making waves this year
This piece is published in collaboration with DIVA Magazine.
Reviews by Tam Omond, words by DIVA x Short Stuff.
You can find out more about BFI Flare here.
This year’s BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Festival can be classed as a celebration of short films. Blending genres, form, style and language, these short films help to tell the stories of our community that may otherwise be forgotten.
One programme in particular is highlighting the vital need to celebrate and amplify the stories of trans-femmes. Entitled For The Girls, these six short films place trans-femmes at the centre of their stories.
To coincide with the launch of this groundbreaking programme, we have partnered with activist, author and cultural producer Tam Omond to discuss these short films. We also spoke to the filmmakers and producers themselves behind the genre-defying short films at the heart of this programme.
PIETRA
Director: Cynthia Levitan
Pietra tells the story of two lonely women living in the same building in a traditional Portuguese neighbourhood. Pietra, who we learn from her doorbell used to be named Pierre, lays carnations at the door of her neighbour to bridge the space between them. Her neighbour, an elderly woman, frustratedly bangs a walking stick to the ceiling when Pietra is getting ready in her room, dancing.
Care is the language of this film, from the stop-motion animation that looks like puppets, through to the joyous soundtrack, and the scents, sounds and textures have been laboured over with so much love. The film’s protagonists are happiest delighting in the beauty of their world and we are gifted with the opportunity to watch their burgeoning desire to care for the other.
iykyk (if you know you know)
Director: Bonita Rajpurohit
We follow a trans girl on her dates with Felix, Nooman, Siddhartha, Manas, Yashwardhan, Jeevan and a couple of others who aren’t named. The camera moving in and out of focus gives her story the feel of a fly on the wall documentary. We watch her cry to her best friend as we follow shitty date after shitty date – the boys call her “brave”, an “inspo” and ask her about fetish and kink. She rolls her eyes and asks why they’re bringing this up on their first date.
In some ways this is a film about the indignities and humiliations trans women who date cis men face. It’s also a condemnation of quite how disappointing cis men are.
What is the importance of queer short filmmaking in 2025?
Bonita Rajpurohit: “To have better queer characters, it is the queer people who have to make films, and shorts are the best way to dive deep into the world of filmmaking and learn how it's all done. This experience skills them to be a better filmmaker and write characters that are closer to the reality they live in. No one can take away the truth from the characters that come from your own lived reality.”
IF I’M HERE IT IS BY MYSTERY
Director: Clari Ribeiro
This film is an incantation. Trans witches and wizards are organised by the Supreme Witch to harness flames, stars and telekinesis so that they can fight back against an ancient order that we see murdering women. Sound familiar? It should. This film comes out of Brazil which, year after year, is the place where most trans people have been murdered. The style of this film is kitsch, kaleidoscopic, fierce, femme gorgeousness. It’s a world I want to live in, rich in the promise that we will stop knife-wielding murderers from attacking trans femmes. The film ends with a dedication: Rest in power “to Mattheusa Passareli and all the magical beings who inhabit other dimensions.”
a place to belong
Director: Theingi Win
We follow a trans elder in Myanmar as she navigates the world, harassed whilst buying salad at the market, cutting a client’s hair at her salon, playing cards around a fire with friends and offering her workplace as a space for trans sex workers to hang out and get ready for work. The four walls of her salon are expansive, stretching to let in the night, the sounds of police cars, her friends outside speaking to their clients. It’s a portrait of an HIV-positive, elder trans woman offering the love and life experience of an auntie to younger sex workers.
What are your hopes for queer short filmmaking?
Theingi Win: “-ကျမနေထိုင်သည် ဖွံဖြိုးဆဲနိုင်ငံတွင် ကျား၊မ ခွဲခြားဆက်ဆံခြင်း အပြင် queer အစုအဖွဲ့များကို
လူ့အသိုင်းအဝိုင်းတွင် တန်းတူညီမျှမှု မရှိခြင်းသည် မြင်တွေ့နေရဆဲပင်ဖြစ်သည်။ ထိုကြောင့်
ကျမပတ်ဝန်းကျင်ရှိ အကြောင်းအရာများကို မှတ်တမ်းရုပ်ရှင်များ ရိုက်ကူးလိုပြီး ရုပ်ရှင်များမှတစ်ဆင့်
စိတ်ချင်းဖလှယ်နိုင်ပြီး စာနာမှုရရှိနိုင်မည်ဟု ယုံသည်။
As a person living in an underdeveloped and military repressed country, I want to develop my community so that gender is not an overriding issue in how we view each other. I want to be open and treated as equals. That's why I want to document the lives of my community as much as possible to share our lives with the world around me.”
lovin’ her
Director: Day
A trans Asian-North American submerges herself in the bathtub and we are shown the span of her life. A queer teen, bewildered parents, first time at a gay bar, first estrogen shot, the decades shift, she comes out, gets married, gets old and, together with her trans wife, we see her checked into a care home.
The beautiful cinematography continues, each shot an exquisitely composed photograph, as we watch a lifetime spent choosing herself and sense some of what those choices cost her. The final scene of T4T love is one of the most deep and tender I’ve watched.
HOT YOUNG GEEK SEEKS BLOOD-SUCKING FREAKS
Director: Heath Virgoe
There’s flavours of What We Do In The Shadows and Only Lovers Left Alive in this cute comedy about how hard it is to come out as trans, even to your best girlfriend. It’s a brave move to drench this complicated moment in any trans life with so much comic relief because there’s a thin line between comedy and ridicule. The sweetness of the girlfriend’s affirmation of her friend steadies it and by the end I defy you not to dance along to the cheesy tunes at the Halloween house party.
What are your hopes for queer short filmmaking?
Heath Virgoe: “I think DIY shorts are the heart and soul of queer filmmaking, and my hope is that this no-budget, homemade style of short film continues to grow and thrive as time goes on. Work like this is so reliant on community, and goes beyond just making a finished product to be about the process of collaboration itself. Through pitching in together to make something, rather than just waiting for funding scheme applications, local filmmaking scenes are able to grow, filmmakers you collaborate with are able to develop their own talents, and unconventional, innovative styles of storytelling can thrive. While I desperately want to see queer short filmmakers moving up to professional commissions and higher-budget funded work, I think it’s key that queer filmmaking retain its roots as a scrappy, scruffy underdog rooted in community. Stay weird!”