Mother's Spring

Displaying the faces and voices of transgender youth, the documentary short shows the authenticity of queer and trans people living in Toronto, while simultaneously discussing the struggles for self-acceptance that people who do not conform to cisgender and heteronormative ideals of gender face. Andy Nguyen, trans director and film student, captures his trans friends in their natural state on 16mm film shot on a Bolex h16 camera. Accompanied by narration written and recited by Salem Rao, this film represents that trans people exist and this is what we look like. Regardless of the obvious everyday transphobia, trans people find community and uniqueness within each other and themselves.

A self-portrait short film on 16mm from a trans male perspective.

As his grandfather falls ill back home, a Vietnamese writer and his emotionally distant father explore the complexities of their relationship and masculinity before it's too late.

Eight-year-old Josh (Bradley Belanger) faces the grief of losing his grandfather while learning the secrets of his mother's (Mary Rupert) dreadful childhood.

Archive footage from 2006 - 2010 of a young girl growing up during the ages of four to eight. Only fragments of what is remembered exists. Words from a transgender man float to the surface as fleeting memories go on.

Haunted by her losing streak, Zara struggles to stand against rival it girl Blaze. As the sound of the clock ticks down, they will do anything to be crowned the Queen of Midnight... no matter who gets hurt.

As queer trans and gender non-conforming children of the Vietnamese diaspora, we are fragmented at the crossroads of being displaced from not only a sense of belonging to our ancestral land, but also our own bodies which are conditioned by society to stray away from our most authentic existence. Yet these bodies of ours are the vessels we sail to embark on a lifetime voyage of return to our original selves. It is our bodies that navigate the treacherous tides of normative systems that impose themselves on our very being. And it is our bodies that act as community lighthouses for collective liberation. Ultimately, the landscape of our bodies is our blueprint to remembering, to healing, to blooming.

After travelling in the middle of a windstorm with a leg injury to the last open strip club during the end of the world, Bunny makes the most of her first day as a freshly changed woman.