‘What Will I Become?’ Premieres At Berlin Film Festival: Powerful Coming-Of-Age Documentary Traces “Transmasculine Grief, Vulnerability, And Survival”
EXCLUSIVE: More than half of trans male adolescents attempt suicide, according to a study the medical journal Pediatrics.
That heart-wrenching statistic underpins the documentary What Will I Become? which just premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in Generation 14plus competition. The feature directed by Lexie Bean and Logan Rozos is described as “a haunting coming-of-age documentary tracing transmasculine grief, vulnerability, and survival. Set against a backdrop of intensifying political division in the United States, the film affirms the strength of shared humanity.”
Blake Brockington in ‘What Will I Become?‘
Deep Dive Films/ITVS
In the film, Bean and Rozos examine the tragic loss of two transmasculine young people who took their own lives: Blake Brockington, aged 18, of Charleston, SC, and Kyler Prescott, aged 14, of Vista, CA. The filmmakers approach the story with intimate knowledge of societal forces that can prompt trans boys to consider harming themselves: Bean and Rozos came out as transmasculine, and survived suicide attempts earlier in their lives.
“This film is a gift to the versions of ourselves who came out and didn’t see a way forward,” Bean and Rozos said in a statement. “This is a film for those who didn’t know how or where to give voice to their experiences, and who have been failed by systems that at once degrade their sense of safety and mental health and pathologize them.”
What Will I Become? is a co-production of ITVS and Deep Dive Films, in association with StoryLens Pictures. Emmy winner Harper Steele, who appeared on screen with her friend Will Ferrell in the Oscar-shortlisted documentary Will & Harperis an executive producer of the film.
We have your first look at the documentary in the clip below.
Directors Lexie Bean (left) and Logan Rozos
Berlin Film Festival
Bean and Rozos serve as our on-camera guides through What Will I Become?though that wasn’t the original intention.
“After a lot of conversations we realized we should be in it because if we’re talking about trans suicide, we need to see living trans people too,” Bean said at a Q&A with several documentary filmmakers in the festival that took place at the Hub space next to the Berlinale Palast. “In the process of making the film, we had quite a bit of pressure to make the ending hopeful in a particular way or to give people answers for what to do next. And I think ultimately by us being in it, I think that is inherently hopeful that people do survive.”
Directors Lexie Bean (left) and Logan Rozos in ‘What Will I Become?’
Deep Dive Films/ITVS
In sequences interspersed in the film, Bean and Rozos converse in a kind of fort-like structure erected in a room. Sometimes the camera is inside the fort with them, sometimes outside, with the directors seen in silhouette.
“Our producer David Sherwin did the actual architecture [of the fort]. So shout out to him,” Rozos said. “It was sort of this childlike space or a protective space where we could have a private conversation of an intimate conversation that feels a little bit more protected from the outside world than scenes that take place outside.”
Along with Sherwin, producers of the film are Drew Dickler, Ricki Stern, and Geoff Pingree. Joining Harper Steele as executive producers are Patrick Stump, Carrie Lozano, and Lois Vossen. Cinematography is by Fletcher Wolfe; Miles Château Hill edited the film. Perigee Vitz-Wong composed the score. Daniel Lobb and Juan Pablo Rozo did the film’s evocative animation.
What Will I Become? screens again on Sunday at the Filmtheater am Friedrichshain venue of the Berlinale.
In the clip below, directors Bean and Rozos visit with the mother of Kyler Prescott, the sensitive youth who took his life at age 14.
