Really Happy Someday

Really Happy Someday 💖, dir. J. Stevens, 2024, Canada, 90 min.
Sunday, June 22, 2025, 1:00 pm, Vogue Theatre, 🇺🇸 US Premiere
(screens with the short Tessitura, reviewed separately)

Really Happy Someday

Z is a singer who loves musical theatre and dreams of Broadway, but he also less than a year ago began transitioning. The testosterone is giving him a bad case of delayed adolescence, complete with cracking voice — not what musical theatre directors want to hear in an audition! His agent is pushing him to consider plain acting roles, which is not what he wants to hear.

Z picks himself up, gets a job as a bartender, with a great boss, and also finds a great vocal coach who helps him find — and find confidence in — his new voice. But in the mean time, his girlfriend has finally gotten a visa to work in the United States and wants to follow through on their shared dreams of moving to New York City. Z has to choose between staying in Toronto and rebuilding his voice, or uprooting to New York before he’s ready to go after Broadway.

It’s a warmly personal story, with plenty of ups and downs, but ultimately a story of Z finding the courage to grow into his new identity. The acting is superb, and the director also made last year’s 💖 Stories from My Gay Grandparents (“Fun in Shorts,” Frameline48), so I give this one another must see.

• IMDb • trailer (courtesy of Victoria [BC] Film Festival) • official website: SpindleFilms.CA/reallyhappysomeday •