How Trans and Nonbinary Filmmakers Are Taking Control of Their Stories

When Vera Drew made her ambitious debut film “The People’s Joker,” she didn’t know if anyone else in the world would understand her deeply personal superhero movie parody about transitioning.

The first time she met a trans person who connected with the film after a public screening was a “mindblowing” experience.

“There had been other trans directors, but something that was that fiercely independent and coming at it from this personal perspective of a trans coming out story – I didn’t really know if there was any sort of audience for that,” Drew tells Variety. “I kind of just thought I was making a movie for myself.”

Like many trans and nonbinary filmmakers making original, often genre-leaning films that resonate with queer audiences, Drew began connecting with other like-minded creatives after screening “The People’s Joker” at festivals like the Toronto International Film Festival and Fantastic Fest. Outside of online spaces, LGBTQ+ festivals like Outfest and Frameline have provided the necessary third spaces for this filmmaking community to grow.

From Jane Schoenbrun (“Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma”), Louise Weard (“Castration Movie”), Alice Maio Mackay (“The Serpent’s Skin”), Avalon Fast (“Camp”) to Drew (“The People’s Joker”), the past five years have brought this emerging group of trans and nonbinary artists into the spotlight. They often appear in each other’s projects and, for the most part, are all navigating the challenges of making art entirely outside the traditional studio system.

Schoenbrun, for instance, appears in the third “Castration Movie” and Jack Haven’s short films. Weard has a role in “Camp Miasma,” while Fast acts in both “Castration Movie” and “The Serpent’s Skin.”

“You get these communities together where we cannot only cheer each other on, but inform each other’s work and inspire one another,” Drew says. “Not every filmmaker has that in this dystopian version of Hollywood that the last generation of filmmakers manifested for all of us.”

These artists are working in an industry that continually struggles to create space for trans and nonbinary filmmakers, from financing to theatrical distribution.

A recent GLAAD report titled “Where We Are in Film” found that there were zero trans characters featured in 2025 releases from the top 10 U.S. distributors; this lack of representation, in large part, comes from a lack of trans directors making big budget movies. That representation shrinks even more when looking at trans directors of color.

“Executives have to step up, not only to increase representation, but to maintain relevance with audiences. Gen Z is largely saving the box office and movie theaters, and they are the queerest generation of all time,” says Raina Deerwater, GLAAD’s associate director of entertainment research.

“There’s a homogeneity to the type of trans filmmaker we’re seeing succeed right now that’s not 100% reflective of the diversity of the trans community,” Weard adds.

One trans filmmaker who has made strides with bigger-budget features is Schoenbrun. Their horror comedy “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” which stars Gillian Anderson and Hannah Einbinder, began its theatrical run this past weekend following a high-profile world premiere at Cannes.

As the Mubi release prepares to go wide later this month, Schoenbrun says they are conscious of their position within the industry as the rare trans filmmaker making movies at the $10 million mark.

“I carry a lot of guilt about taking the money that I am obviously desperately clutching for from Hollywood. I’m really so proud of the movies I make, the way that I make them and the people I make them with. But being the only trans filmmaker making movies at this budget level — that’s not my fault, but it would be a lot better, in general, if I wasn’t the only one,” Schoenbrun says, explaining that they’ve felt “jealous” when watching directors like Mackay make movies with “a bunch of other trans people.”

“And then even saying that out loud to you in Variety feels like, what an asshole thing to do! I could do that if I wanted to do that, but I’m choosing not to. I’m choosing to participate in this noxious system without any other people like me,” they add. “I have carved out a path that’s different from a lot of my trans peers, and that should just be part of the conversation.”

The film that connects this circle of trans and nonbinary filmmakers most closely is Weard’s “Castration Movie” anthology, the third of which explores what happens in a relationship after Izzy’s (Fast) partner comes out as trans — an experience that has rarely been depicted in film.

Throughout all three “Castration” chapters, Weard says she has been drawn to “ugly perspectives” in the world.

“With this one, the idea of the turf and the type of person who would claim feminism at the expense of trans people’s rights is a perspective very distant from mine,” Weard says. “In researching the role, it came down to this idea of equating male violence with this fear of trans people, where these women might see a trans woman as the scary men in their life who have preyed on them in the past.”

Weard’s DIY-style anthology has become a crucial epicenter of contemporary trans artists, featuring everyone from Schoenbrun to Drew to Mackay in various roles. Lilly Wachowski even executive produced the third chapter.

Weard also embraces the perspective of a trans character that’s “hard to understand” at times. “She’s this totem for the embarrassing start of transition that I think a lot of trans people go through.”

As one of the most prolific trans filmmakers making movies right now, Schoenbrun takes the initiative to have emerging directors and writers shadow on set. Eva Victor, for instance, shadowed on “I Saw the TV Glow” before going on to write and direct their award-winning indie breakout “Sorry, Baby,” while “The Serpent’s Skin” and “Our Effed Up World” director Mackay shadowed on “Camp Miasma.”

Mackay says, “We’re not competing with each other; we’re all trying to do our own thing but have this community to lean back and be supported on.”

After making “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair,” which put Schoenbrun on the map in 2021 after Sundance, they have intentionally placed “more boundaries” around them.

“Even while I have a circle of really close friends and artists who I admire and love and want to be collaborating with and supporting in this way, there’s something that’s always going to be a little transactional about it,” Schoenbrun says.

Thanks to the Fatales Forward program, emerging filmmaker Sepi Mashiahof was matched with Schoenbrun as a mentor. Since then, Mashiahof worked as Schoenbrun’s assistant on “I Saw the TV Glow” and was promoted to script coordinator on “Camp Miasma.”

“What I learned from Jane is how much they love and are so open and receptive to the ideas of the people around them,” Mashiahof says.

Haven, who starred in both “I Saw the TV Glow” and “Camp Miasma” and has directed multiple short films, explains that they’ve seen Schoenbrun take “great pains” to raise money.

“This comes from explaining themselves, through working really diligently to connect with financiers about this universal pain that they work into their films, and I think there’s something in it that cannot be bought or sold,” Haven says. “Of course, we are connected to an industry that is about making money, that is about self-sustaining as artists, but ultimately it becomes more and more about what cannot be bought or sold and what is eternal to us as artists.”

Schoenbrun’s experience as an openly trans filmmaker is deeply reflected in their work, particularly with the journey that “Camp Miasma” protagonist Kris (Hannah Einbinder) takes in fighting to get her vision understood by studio executives.

Schoenbrun explains: “Anytime I’m on a Zoom with Hollywood, with people who I’m maybe going to work with on something, or doing a general, my transness is going to be in the room. Even if they have the best intentions, it’s a particular minority experience in that there are no other trans people on the other side of the call. And if there is, it’s queer assistant, right? And they’re not actually being given any power, they’re there in a tokenized way.”

Drew says she’d “love” to make a studio movie, for one. But getting a second feature off the ground has proven difficult.

“My first movie was a huge critical success, got a ton of buzz out of its festival run, had a Streisand effect because of its legal baggage, it won multiple awards,” Drew says. “In another era, that probably could have meant that Disney or Paramount or fucking Star Wars, one of these people would be coming to me and saying, ‘We have this thing we want you to shepherd.’”

She continues: “I don’t know if I’m just too aggressive and trans and hairy-arm pitted for that to happen, but I do know that didn’t happen to me — I assume kind of partially because of media consolidation, also because of the subject matter of my first movie. And the fact that I made a movie that was very explicitly about my experience as a trans woman and as an artist, which is another thing that makes it quasi-inaccessible to a major studio.”

Drew’s next feature, the horror comedy “Trandemic,” recently earned a $25,000 cash grant from the Duplass Brothers’ inaugural Found Footage Feature Fund award, and has reportedly already attracted interest from distributors. Other programs like the Trans Film Mentorship and the Sundance Institute’s Trans Possibilities Intensive also provide funding for trans filmmakers.

In addition to performing in films like “Castration Movie” and “Camp Miasma,” Fast is a filmmaker in their own right, making their debut with “Honeycomb” back in 2022 for just $5,000 with a group of friends.

Their most recent film, “Camp,” follows a troubled young woman who works as a camp counselor to escape the memory of tragic events in her life. Things, of course, take a supernatural, witchy turn.

Despite getting a higher budget for “Camp,” which was distributed by Dark Sky Films and played at festivals like Frameline, Fast doesn’t have any ambitions to work with more money on future projects.

“I really want to have a good life and I don’t want my life to become industrialized. We all know how bad it is, so why are we fighting to be a part of it?” Fast says. “For me, I’m able to sustain myself through service work, I’m comfortable doing that, I don’t mind it. If I can continue making films for micro budgets with my friends, these are the things that I find inspiring and that I get real joy out of.”

Even with “Camp,” Fast admits they had a “really hard time” maintaining their voice.

“I’m so opposed to sacrificing any of my vision for something to be better understood or for our distributors to be happy or for the producers to feel involved in the process or whatever,” Fast says. “I got ‘Camp’ through to the other side without the vision being too mangled, but fuck, it was such a fight. And I don’t want to fight my whole life when I don’t have to.”

Mackay, who at the age of 22 has already directed seven features, recently screened “Our Effed Up World” at Fantastia, which was produced by Schoenbrun. To date, she has heavily relied on crowdfunding to bring her projects to life.

“I feel very grateful to have been able to make the films I have made, but it’s been at such a micro scale. I don’t necessarily want to do the next Marvel movie and have a trillion dollars, but I want to make something in the few million-dollar range,” Mackay says. “That’s the dream to keep growing and moving out of the micro-budget space.”

Many of Mackay’s films are streaming on Shudder, which has helped her body of work connect with horror fans around the world.

“I mean, they literally picked up my first film that I made with no money when I was 16, and that was not something that I ever dreamed of,” Mackay says.

As if making movies wasn’t already hard enough, trans storytellers working in independent spaces are now grappling with the realities of a shifting industry in which studios are consolidating, leading many in Hollywood to sign open letters speaking out against the looming Paramount-Warner Bros. merger. The merger has also ignited fears about a rightward shift.

But the reality is that many trans and nonbinary filmmakers have already had to carve out a space for themselves separate from the studio system.

“This literal monopoly that’s existed, to me, adds value to independent filmmakers. I think independent film is stronger than ever,” Drew says. “The capitalist hellscape that we’re in makes me feel more empowered as an independent filmmaker because my perspective has value.”

Alex Schmider, GLAAD’s senior director of entertainment and a producer behind “Disclosure” and “Changing the Game,” says he is “inspired” by contemporary trans artists: “They are undeterred by lack of funding, institutional support, and traditional distribution. In fact, they’re more creative and collaborative in their approach and strategies than ever.”

Drew says: “The benefit of mostly existing in these indie spaces is that we get to tell our own story and get to control the narrative a little bit. I make the movies that only I could make. Louise makes the movies that only she could, and Alice is the same way.”

There was a wave not too long ago when Hollywood tried to tell stories about trans people, usually helmed by cisgender directors. Several won Oscars, including “The Danish Girl” starring Eddie Redmayne and “Boys Don’t Cry” starring Hilary Swank. But in today’s media landscape, no directors working with major studios are interested.

“When I’ve pitched ideas in mainstream spaces and there is a trans lead, the feedback I’ve gotten sometimes is, ‘This is too niche.’ Which is frustrating, I guess, but it’s only frustrating because it appeared differently when the trans tipping point was happening with ‘Transparent’ on TV.”

A recent example of a cisgender director prominently centering their film around a trans character was Jacques Audiard’s musical “Emilia Pérez.” Despite earning 13 Oscar nominations, that film faced significant pushback from the LGBTQ+ community.

Haven says, “It’s a film from the voyeuristic perspective, and so it makes transness into something that is fascinating, titillating, perverse. But it doesn’t hit at the core of what I understand transness to be, which is in direct opposition to the message that things cannot change. Because transness is imagination, and imagination is liberation.”

Mashiahof adds that when cisgender directors tell trans stories, they happen to align with the “strange imagination” that a man is pretending to be a woman.

“Whereas you have a film like ‘I Saw the TV Glow’ where transness is just this feeling that is the world, versus it being located on a person doing a thing that looks weird to society,” Mashiahof says. “When trans filmmakers are given the opportunity to tell a story, it actually warps that and shifts the onus of that weirdness onto society versus the person.”

Born out of filmmaker and programmer Elizabeth Purchell’s “moment of crisis,” Muscle Distribution was founded in 2025 as the only trans-owned distribution label. In the past year, Muscle has become the go-to stop for micro-budget films from trans filmmakers like “Castration Movie,” as well as two of Fast’s films, “Honeycomb” and the upcoming release “Drinking and Driving.”

“The ultimate gimmick is seeing a trans movie in a theater because they’re not really being made, programmers aren’t showing them and no one wants to get behind them in a meaningful way,” Purchell says. “[But] now we’re in this moment where there is this opening for people to find stuff online, for DIY groups to put together screenings, for theaters and festivals to start taking notice. Something really is happening.”

Some filmmakers in this space have also taken the approach of making their films widely available online with a “pay what you wish” model, which Weard has done with all three “Castration” films.

“It was definitely a project that was always designed for online first. Anything else has been a fun bonus,” she says.

Weard, who started making movies over a decade ago, has noticed “so much more hope” in the trans filmmakers she meets now.

“I was just at the Cannes Film Festival and I saw so many trans people walking around at the market and at these pavilions,” she says. “I was so blown away. That was not an experience I was seeing at all at film festivals a few years ago.”

Looking around at the community they’ve found and the work their friends are putting out against the odds, Haven says that “we’re creating a new industry.”

“I think there’s a lot of power in it because it can’t be co-opted and it can’t be bought,” they conclude. “We went through a really confusing era where big industry was trying to take transness and sell it to us, but it actually just doesn’t sell because transness threatens a lot of the structures that we know. We are in a place, now, where we’re able to reinvent it on our own.”