A family living under one roof in New York must deal with a life-changing transformation by one that ultimately affects them all. Ray is a teenager who has come to the realisation that he isn't meant to be a girl and has decided to transition from female to male. His single mother, Maggie, must track down Ray's biological father to get his legal consent to allow Ray's transition. Dolly, Ray's lesbian grandmother, is having a hard time accepting that she now has a grandson. They must each confront their own identities and learn to embrace change and their strength as a family in order to ultimately find acceptance and understanding.

3 Generations 

In this tender clay animation, a little girl is mistaken for a boy and relishes the opportunity.


Illuminating the innocence of ﬁrst sexual experiences and the ﬂuidity of gender identity, 

 is a delightful reminiscence of childhood.

Adam

 marks the first creative collaboration between Toronto-based artist Chase Joynt (Everyday to Stay) and NYC-based filmmaker Brooke Sebold (Red Without Blue). 

With haunting suburban visuals backed by the rich sounds of Toronto based-band Ohbijou, 

 powerfully engages in a relationship between an Orthodox Jewish mother and her transgender son as they navigate silent secrets of a shared past.

"Hauntingly beautiful. Rarely have I watched a film that is such a perfect union of parsimony and punch. It left me breathless." - Michelle Stone 

"Perfectly timed and sequenced, 

 is so resolutely personal in it's detailing. Joynt points to a place, draws a circle around it, and then refuses to fill it in, restraint that leaves a powerful silence in which the viewer can inhabit." - Mike Hoolboom, Winner of the EP Canada/Canada Film Capital Award for Emerging Canadian Artist, Inside Out LGBT Film & Video Festival (2012)

Akin

, an experimental documentary, explores the shifting terrain of gender identity. The film includes vividly charged discussions with Audrey, who insists she is Superman. Playful and arresting, Audrey de-cloaks from Clark Kent to Superman, revealing her “secret identity” as a boy. She does push-ups, practices flying, vehemently declares “I wanted to be a boy when I got borned, you know, outta your tummy!” and imagines “saving the police from the bad guy,” all the while drawing us into her state of transformation. The unscripted narrative is built through the collaboration of mother and daughter; Audrey is youthfully honest and willing to reveal her inner emotional state.
She is open as only a six-year-old could be. 

Audrey Superhero

 is a tale of working class childhood in Catholic Ireland. The protagonist speaks through two bodies, the before and after. Here the camera roams the landscape in search of portals connected to lost time; a whistle in the dark recalls a former body; a witness shows up and attempts to disrupt narratives they have once lived through.

Exalted

Anneke is 12. She loves ice hockey and has a loving, close-knit family. She’s also a hardcore tomboy. Everybody who meets her assumes she’s a boy. That makes puberty even harder for her than most girls.


Anneke’s not sure if she wants to be a girl, a boy, or something in-between when she grows up. To give her more time to decide, her doctor has put her on a medication that will suppress the hormones that are causing her body to change before she’s ready. Even though she’s been rejected by her friends and struggles with depression and suicidal thoughts, Anneke is determined to be her true self. To do that she’s decided to maintain a fluid gender identity—she wants to make sure her insides matches her outsides. 

 looks into the heart of a new generation of children who don't always fit into a binary conception of gender.

I’m Just Anneke

(Editors note: TJ Cuthand now uses he/him pronouns, however to respect the artists' integrity his original synopsis has been included below)

In 1995 when TJ was 16 she felt like the only lesbian at her Saskatoon high school. This turned out to be untrue, but the lack of visibility in her high school coupled with the lack of representation of Queer teenagers in the 90's made her make her first video, a comedic short about teenage lesbian loneliness and trying to bribe classmates to come out with the promise of candy.

TJ Cuthand is a filmmaker and performance artist, writer and curator of Plains Cree as well as Scottish and Irish descent. He is credited with coining the term Indigiqueer, for modern Indigenous LGBTQ people. 

Lessons In Baby Dyke Theory

 is one of the major protagonists of the Dutch/Japanese animated series 

. The character Ollie transitions in the show in 2013 and was claimed to be a trans character because their pronouns changed to he/him when he enters his adulthood. 

A stork of the Great Wasteland and one of Alfred's childhood friends, Ollie's kind and determined nature led him in becoming from an unrecognized lawyer to a democratically elected president of his homeland after Dolf's initial defeat. Along with Alfred, he helps his friends in investigating the actions of the villain forces in the second Heroes vs. Villains.

Ollie from Alfred J. Kwak Children's Series 

 tells of two girls who imagine a world where they can dream, learn, grow, and be together without limits of words and empty homes. The narrator finds a safe place in her pal, Dóra. They give each other an uncharted strength and magic that they didn’t know existed outside of their drawings. Together they build something new.

This story contains quiet bits of magic. It holds layers of vulnerability, pain, gentle wonder, warmth, and power. It carries an LGBTQ narrative often overlooked--it’s not about marriage, it’s not about a simple kind of love. It is about the beginnings: the realisation as a child that so many ways of connecting and building exist. It is about that spark and strength that comes with the realisation of a relationship big and untaught."

, inspired by the director's own coming out journey as trans and more, was developed into a young reader's novel published by Penguin Random House in 2020.

The Ship We Built

, a 19-year-old boy, moves into his first dorm room. In a shoebox, he finds old photos that remind him of his childhood.

Categories

Childhood