GLR July-August 2025

fied anti-trans comments during a livestream. “We ultimately feel honored to be attacked by our community,” one of them says to the camera, fully deadpan. The vapid couple hires a heavily pregnant bisexual videog rapher, Nicole, to shoot an apology video and document their life together. Dangling increasing sums of money in front of Nicole, the couple eventually persuades her to stay for the week end, during which Thistle repeatedly escalates her demands and intrusions into Nicole’s privacy. Thistle’s passive-aggression becomes increasingly aggressive until the situation develops into a full-on horror movie scenario, though the film never en tirely stops being funny. O NE OF THE MOST INDELIBLE FIGURES of director Jennie Liv ingston’s 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning , which captured New York’s queer ballroom scene as the 1980s drew to a close, was a young trans performer named Venus Xtravaganza. Venus, who shared relatable dreams of love and success in the film, was murdered during its making, a crime that was never solved. I’m Your Venus , a documentary from director Kimberly Reed, At seventeen, I half-supposed my secret wrongfulness might heal or normalize if I could turn, by alchemy, into a girl. Would D. have wrestled me to nakedness if he could squeeze plump virgin breasts between his hands, instead of shoving me away one afternoon to hide his fierce erection? That night—reverting to my dress-up episodes, pre-puberty, when I’d paraded in my grandma’s hats and pumps—I locked my bedroom door and draped a sheet around my face. I fantasized enravishment by Darcy at high tea or rape by Grandcourt in a boat at dawn. Arousal overwhelmed me like a hot tsunami: surmounting wave, explosive foam, then salts of self-disgust. That fall, when D. went back to college in the South, the urge to change my stripes just ebbed away. I accepted who I thought I was, a lumpen nerd in male-ish form. But underneath, in the soul’s oblivious tarn, a covert river rose, then carried me, unknowingly at first and then unwillingly, at last with buoyant thrill— part-boy, part-girl—to a leather bar in far west Chelsea called the Spike, where studs and queens of many genders jostled. I floated there— on a sea of horniness and sour beer—cruising warily as newbies must—while bearded seals and otters circled in the dark, eyes peeled for a guileless abalone they could pry apart with lust. M ALCOLM F ARLEY Neither Here Nor There

details efforts by her Italian-Puerto Rican birth family, the Pel lagattis, and her chosen family, the House of Xtravaganza, to find her killer and honor her legacy. The Pellagatti brothers posthumously change their sister’s legal name, replace her tombstone, and press for a deeper in vestigation into her murder, while her queer and trans family from the House of Xtravaganza works to get her home in Jersey City designated a historic landmark. Her brothers meet with friends from her life in New York and face the ways in which they failed to support Venus during her lifetime, and ultimately the two families find themselves united in a shared cause, across a series of moving scenes that demonstrate how even the most unlikely groups can find common ground. ACLU ATTORNEY C HASE S TRANGIO is the first openly trans lawyer to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Stran gio is at the center of Heightened Scrutiny, a documentary ex ploring the rising tide of attacks on trans rights. In the film, dozens of other trans people and allies also have their say, pro viding a broad survey of the arguments surrounding gender affirming healthcare and the rights of trans people simply to exist. Director Sam Feder follows Strangio as he prepares for his December 2024 argument before the high court against a Tennessee law blocking treatment for trans minors. That narrative is intercut with talking-head seg ments with trans and allied journalists, as well as scenes that include trans rights rallies and intimate gatherings with trans celebrities such as Elliot Page and Miss Pep permint, and with a startlingly articulate twelve-year old New York trans girl named Mila. This is a thoughtful, moving film and a useful primer for anyone who needs to know more about trans people or the con servative efforts to wipe them out of existence. S EVERAL OTHER FILMS stood out for their ingenuity or perspective, including the Canadian documentary Bul letproof: A Lesbian’s Guide to Surviving the Plot , which examines the “Bury Your Gays” trope in televi sion and film by exploring the backlash that followed the onscreen deaths of beloved lesbian characters. A San Francisco-set feature, Outerlands depicts a nonbi nary alcoholic re-examining their messy family rela tionships after a hookup with a coworker leads to surrogate parenthood for their precocious twelve-year old daughter. Pooja, Sir , made in Nepal, sends gender nonconforming Detective Inspector Pooja Thapa from Kathmandu to a distant town to find two young boys kidnapped during the country’s 2015 Madhesi protests. Dante’s Inferno gets a contemporary, candy-colored Colombian spin in Rains Over Babel , as a motley group of misfits gathers at the titular nightclub to face matters of life, death, sexuality, and gender, with help from a talking salamander named Rosa. Opposite to that film’s zany tone is the spare but searing Sandbag Dam , a Croation coming-of-age drama about a teenage love affair snuffed out by parental disapproval but rekindled when one of the boys returns home for his father’s funeral.

July–August 2025

49