“Trans New Weird” (2026 shorts program)
- 🙂 Artifice, dir. Theo Rose, 2025, USA, 12 min. 🌉 Bay Area premiere
- 😁🤪 The Beach Boys, dir. Milo Talwani, 2024, USA, 20 min. 🌉 Bay Area premiere
- 😁 Choked, dir. Travis Alabanza, 2026, UK, 10 min.
- 🤩 iykyk: if you know you know, dir. Bonita Rajpurohit, 2024, India, 18 min., in English, Hindi & Gujarati
- 👎 My Structuralist Film, dir. Angelo Madsen, 2026, USA, 7 min. 🌊 West Coast premiere
- 👹 Smooth, dir. Sepi Mashiahof, 2023, USA, 20 min., in English & Persian (Farsi)
🙂 Artifice, dir. Theo Rose, 2025, USA, 12 min.
🌉 Bay Area premiere
⚠️ some flashing lights
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| Artifice |
Frameline blurb: A meditation on a mystic woman haunted by pronouns, personality, and projection. Through poetry, presence, and subtle exposition, the film forgoes conventional narrative structure in favor of circling around its thesis: What can you know about a person? They shift in the light.
Some disturbing voiceover imagery, suggesting abusive treatment, possibly horrifically so. I really didn’t track it very well, and generally don’t resonate with this style of filmmaking. Recommended for those who feel more 🤩 than 🙄 when you read the Frameline blurb.
• IMDb: (no listing found) • Official website • Filmmaker • Twitter • Instagram • Facebook • preview • other •
😁🤪 The Beach Boys, dir. Milo Talwani, 2024, USA, 20 min. 🌉 Bay Area premiere
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| The Beach Boys |
Frameline blurb: There is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror. But in the meantime we can smoke weed and surf with our friends.
“Dude, no swearing! The revolution has to be fun, friendly, and accessible to all ages.”
Two surfer dudes, catching waves, smoking weed, making s’mores, and plotting revolutionary terrorism to end capitalist oppression. It’s amazing how filosoffikal a little weed can make you. Think “Bill and Ted Go To Marxist Summer Camp.” A cute bit of fluff, worth seeing, especially if you’re into surfer dudes, anticapitalism, or both. Highly (with an emphasis on “high”) recommended.
• IMDb: Talwani • Official website • Filmmaker • Twitter • Instagram • Facebook • preview • watch an earlier version (2024, with one additional scene) •
😁 Choked, dir. Travis Alabanza, 2026, UK, 10 min.
⚠️🔞 sexual content
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| Choked |
Frameline blurb: Shakona doesn't always want to be treated so nicely... sometimes she wants to feel like the world does: chaotic. Yet she can't get her devoted and loving boyfriend Eddie to meet her needs, so she goes to where all good decisions are made: a hookup app. Just as it seems like Shakona is finally letting go, she has the chance to take power into her own hands.
Shakona’s boyfriend Eddie is everything she could hope for: thoughtful, considerate, devoted … well, everything except a wild animal in the bedroom. She tries the apps and hooks up with someone who is perhaps not quite all of those things, but is at least willing to let loose a bit.
Interesting, an angle on relationships we don’t often hear about, especially with the added perspective of being trans. Worth seeing, highly recommended, with the caveat that the sex scenes are not for the vanilla at heart.
• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Twitter • Instagram • Facebook • preview • other •
🤩 iykyk: if you know you know, dir. Bonita Rajpurohit, 2024, India, 18 min., in English, Hindi & Gujarati
⚠️🔞 simulated graphic sex
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| if you know you know |
Frameline blurb: Set in a tier-II city of Gujarat [specifically Vadodara], if you know you know taps into the lifestyle and dating app culture of today’s youth. We follow Kusum on a first date with guys, raised on different values and conditioning, each trying to figure out how to deal with her trans identity without crossing boundaries.
“Every time I go out with a guy, it’s like he’s doing a big favor on me by being okay with my identity.”
The apps are hard enough to navigate for cisgender people, wading through the “I’m a soldier stationed abroad, looking for that one special person to settle down with” and the “let me tell you about crypto investing” and “I want to make an OnlyFans video with you (but first you have to subscribe)” and the myriad other scams, hustles, and shady characters. Adding the element of being trans, especially in a culture with not the best record of trans recognition and acceptance, threading the narrow gap between rejection and fetishization, and your odds of positive results are depressingly low.
An important voice to stand up and be heard. Must see.
• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Twitter • Instagram • Facebook • preview • other •
👎 My Structuralist Film, dir. Angelo Madsen, 2026, USA, 7 min. 🌊 West Coast premiere
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| My Structuralist Film |
Frameline blurb: How shall I cater best to your desire for me to be visible?
Set up as a confessional-cum-guided meditation, My Structuralist Film uses performance artist Tehching Hsieh's One Year Performance (“Time Clock Piece”) as a framework to illustrate the filmmaker's (presumable) insides. How thoroughly should a trans body want or need to be visible? On what terms is the filmmaker obligated to narrativize, perform, or even fabricate visibility for the sake of an audience? Considering the limits and limitations of disclosure, this project positions the act of looking not as an offering or an exchange, but as an unyielding neoliberal, capitalist craving to consume.
My take: The narrator says that when they were an infant, a famous performance artist took a photo of them every day for a year. They took that experience as inspiration to take a photo from the inside, every day for a year.
It’s an odd and thoroughly esoteric concept, although the photographs could also be described as enteric. The bit about neoliberal capitalism I would never have guessed without the blurb, and I’m not sure I see it, even with the assist. Recommended only for serious students of experimental film.
• IMDb: director • Official website • Filmmaker • Twitter • Instagram • Facebook • preview • other •
👹 Smooth, dir. Sepi Mashiahof, 2023, USA, 20 min., in English & Persian (Farsi)
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| Smooth |
Frameline blurb: After being rejected by her stalker for being too hairy, a trans woman spirals into a dysphoric limbo, and the only way out of it is through her own skin.
To begin with, I’m not much of a horror fan, so I wasn’t exactly primed to love this short. Then we get to the details of the story. The stalker angle is just downright creepy, but not in a fun way. The soundtrack is reminiscent of the “just barely quiet enough to keep OSHA away” air conditioning fans on Muni trains, but without the rhythm and flow of that god-awful industrial noise. Then there’s blood, rather a lot of it, and flashing lights to top everything off.
Enthusiastically not recommended.
• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Twitter • Instagram • Facebook • preview • other •
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