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San Francisco Transgender Film Festival
Thursday, 13 November 2025 until Sunday, 23 November 2025
Founded in 1997, the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival (SFTFF) builds a strong and diverse community through the power of transgender cinema. SFTFF is the world’s first and longest-running Transgender Film Festival, and co-presents year-round screenings in collaboration with other LGBT film festivals. Our programs strengthen awareness of transgender identity, history and culture, support emerging and established independent filmmakers working with transgender themes and provide a dynamic and inclusive forum for dialogue about local and global transgender issues.
2025 films...
Assigned Female at Birth, Speed Dating Ableism, Season 3, Episode 2
Season 3, Episode 2, CAN I DATE YOU BOTH? finds Zander and zir sister Melanie reluctantly trying speed dating for the first time. Zander has flashbacks to all dir bad dates and Melanie has to reject Dale more times than she can count. And when Zander’s ex appears, what little chaos hasn’t occurred explodes into a polyamorous hookup.
Director
Skylar Lyralen Kaye
Year
2023
Theystory by Future Flowers
From a colorful house party, to an amazing pool party, to a moving underwater scene, this music video takes viewers through the multitudes of emotions and experiences that come with being transexual/ nonbinary/ gender nonconforming in the world today.
This music video is a gift to all trans people. It is a validation of our emotions and a reminder that we are never alone in the struggle. For us, by us. We are so beautiful.
Director
Jazz Pierre
Year
2025
Prisoner’s Cinema
A non-binary person follows an occult tutorial to practice scrying, and stares into their black mirror until they hallucinate…and what they see isn’t what they wanted.
Director
Shirin Mori
Year
2025
At Home
Through the voices of a 29-year-old trans musician and a 79-year-old lesbian archivist, At Home weaves together stories of self-discovery, chosen family, and community building – from jam sessions and shared gatherings to the legacy of the Brick Hut Café and the Bay Area Lesbian Archives.
aubreypandori.com
Special thanks to Rosa Park.
Director
Aubrey Pandori
Year
2025
Monster in the Mirror (in the time of Executive Orders)
Performing to a Sesame Street song from my childhood, I am reimagining what a “Monster in the Mirror” could mean for me in this moment. Part emboldening of a theatrical younger self and part joyful resistance, this performance art piece celebrates the existence of trans and nonbinary people through recruiting my fellow monsters.
Director
Al Ellison
Year
2025
This Side Up
“This Side Up” is a short film that documents the interior lives of art handlxrs and their experiences in the art world. Set in the Bay Area and contextualized by the voice of contemporary art curator Eungie Joo, this film features Adrian Clutario and Nahkoura Mahnassi as they explore the ways that their identities as LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC people intersect with their roles behind the scenes of museums and art galleries. The film also brings into view the international scale of the art world, with appearances from art handlxrs located in Los Angeles, New York, and Mexico City.
Director
Alex J Bledsoe
Year
2025
FORever feroshUS
Shae, a man murdered in a homophobic attack, awakens in a mysterious room where the entirety of his life is projected across a series of screens. As he journeys through these memories, he must reach the final screen to uncover the truth about his death. But to get there, he must make peace with the life he’s lived.
This film is an homage to O’Shae Sibley.
Director
Naya Ryan
Year
2024
Holy Rollers
Holy Rollers 25, directed by Shawna Virago and Lindsay Gauthier, features Virago reading books banned for their LGBTQ+ content – a defiant gesture against the censorship targeting her community. The song itself, featuring Virago’s punk country sound, is a haunting meditation on willful ignorance and the weaponization of faith in contemporary America, is transformed by video into an act of resistance with its insouciant attitude and playful attitude.
Director
Shawna Virago and Lindsay Gauthier
Year
2025
THE MARTIAL FOREST
In a dystopian present, exiled Kung Fu master Big Sister 13 leads a crew of Trans and Queer fighters who reclaim a forgotten zone and transform it into the Martial Forest—a secret training ground where care is as powerful as combat. Together, they fight to survive rising violence and build a future rooted in chosen family and trans resistance.
https://www.thefirstkissofthenight.com
Director
J Triangular
Year
2025
Monster in the Mirror (in the time of Executive Orders)
From a colorful house party, to an amazing pool party, to a moving underwater scene, this music video takes viewers through the multitudes of emotions and experiences that come with being transexual/ nonbinary/ gender nonconforming in the world today.
Performing to a Sesame Street song from my childhood, I am reimagining what a “Monster in the Mirror” could mean for me in this moment. Part emboldening of a theatrical younger self and part joyful resistance, this performance art piece celebrates the existence of trans and nonbinary people through recruiting my fellow monsters.
Director
Al Ellison
Year
2025
i feel like throwing up
Directed by queer singer-songwriter Tom Goss, “I Feel Like Throwing Up” by Ryan Cassata is a visceral, defiant, and ultimately hopeful visual journey through illness, identity, and empowerment. Written during Cassata’s ongoing battle with Lyme disease and co-infections, the song and video channel the raw intensity of that experience into something transformative — linking personal pain with the broader struggle of trans resilience in today’s hostile political climate.
Starring the legendary Shea Diamond as a radiant, take-no-prisoners superhero, the video features a cast of BIPOC youth actors and unapologetically centers trans joy, resistance, and chosen family. In a striking showdown, our hero faces off against a MAGA mob, radiating power, pride, and the kind of love that builds unshakable community.
At a time when young trans people across the country are being targeted and made to feel isolated, “I Feel Like Throwing Up” stands as a beacon — a reminder that they’re not alone, and that fierce, vibrant community is not just a dream, but a reality we’re building together.
Director
Tom Goss, Ryan Cassata
Year
2025
Dragfox
Sam’s search for identity gets interrupted by a mysterious neighbourhood fox. Together they embark on a magical journey to the attic to discover the surprising things they might have in common, and how to celebrate the ways in which they differ.
Director
Lisa Ott
Year
2025
A New Creation Story
Since the ancient world, Creation Stories have been told to help us not simply imagine the way the world was formed, but our divine place within it. Blending animation, poetry, music, stories rooted in various cultures and live elements, A New Creation Story celebrates Black Trans community and retells the making of the Universe — taking us on a journey from before the first molecule was crafted until the precise moment where everything has truly come to be.
Director
J Mase III, Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi, Audria LB
Year
2025
An Extraterrestrial Exchange
An alien student enrolled in an exchange program comes to Earth to experience a real life human school. However, upon arrival they are quick to be othered by the terrible, horrifying beasts known as middle schoolers. An unsuccessful attempt at fitting in later, they are approached by a lone boy that knows exactly how it feels to fall outside of the norm.
Director
Ash Bieber
Year
2025
“Strange Power” Music Video
MAXA, The Maddest Woman in the World’ is an epic rock horror musical capturing the life story of Paula Maxa, the famed French tragedienne who died thousands of deaths for the patrons who haunted the infamously bloody theater known as the Grand Guignol. In 1940’s France, it becomes Paula’s strange destiny to carry the very same horrors of the Grand Guignol into her private life. Only then does she confront the very night that changed her existence forever. The story is a heartfelt, shrewd examination of the timeless struggle between trauma and healing, exemplified by bookwriter and lyricist Mika Kauffman’s wordplay of levity and macabre, as well as composer Thomas Jacobsen’s complex, sweeping orchestrations with a contemporary electronic score.
“Strange Power” features Paula Maxa as she romanticizes and reflects on her morbid curiosities born from traumatic events that escalated her rise to fame, paying homage to the “poor witches of the middle ages” who burned at the stake before her.
“This song is about taking the things that have brought you down and dancing on their graves.” – Daniella Caggiano
www.maxamusical.com
Director
Daniella Caggiano
Year
2020
SHEMERGENCY
Sher is a transgender superheroine, guardian of the trans* and queer community. Not all of Sher’s missions consist in defeating supervillains; some are more mundane, at times ridiculous, but still with the support and help of her sisters in the times of need in mind.
Director
Paolo Accogli
Year
2024
Are you scared yet?
We witness an unlikely encounter between a sledgehammer-wielding queer dancer and two tea-drinking elderly guests at a kitsch resort. The guests feel moved to participate in the dancer’s porcelain and norm-shattering performance. The music video encourages us all to join in.
Dance: Brødskive (Jens Martin Hartvedt Arvesen)
Director
Elle Whitney
Year
2025
Toni
“There’s so many different layers that created Toni that you see today.” Follow Toni William’s retelling of her life journey in this new short documentary directed by internationally-recognized photographer Chloe Aftel. Toni, a transgender woman who discovered her true self in the 1970s, narrates her individual evolution while showing off a fabulous sense of style and recounting amusing anecdotes; all details that are simultaneously juxtaposed with the U.S.’s overarching current political landscape, which is further contextualized by facts related to LGBTQ+ communities. From leaving home at age fourteen and residing in San Francisco’s famous Tenderloin neighborhood, now encompassing the world’s first legally recognized transgender district, to time spent in California’s Vacaville Prison, Toni’s experiences weave a rich tapestry of one woman’s life, struggles, and triumphs. As a young woman helping her friends turned certified Peer Specialist working in the trans community, Toni’s message rings out clear: “I am a better person because I am true to myself.”
Director
Chloe Aftel
Year
2025
At Home
Through the voices of a 29-year-old trans musician and a 79-year-old lesbian archivist, At Home weaves together stories of self-discovery, chosen family, and community building – from jam sessions and shared gatherings to the legacy of the Brick Hut Café and the Bay Area Lesbian Archives.
aubreypandori.com
Special thanks to Rosa Park.
Director
Aubrey Pandori
Year
2025
Starting Whistle
Starting Whistle explores the intersection of gender, sport, and power through the story of Maren “Nightmaren.” By day, she navigates the demands of work and family; by night, she laces up her skates and takes on the track.
Director
Eve Sanchez
Year
2025
Augmented
AUGMENTED is an experimental documentary that looks at the different terms used to describe medical augmentation, my massive spinal surgery, and Transgender alignment. Max Wolf Valerio in interview. Shot entirely on 16mm.
https://raymondrea.com/augmented-detail
Director
Raymond Rea
Year
2025
After What Happened at the Library
(Includes Spoilers) Inspired by my viral true story. Akita the drag queen hasn’t left her apartment in days. Her inboxes overflow with messages of praise, concern, and… death threats. She lets in a film crew and recounts to a reporter about how Nazis stormed her Drag Story Hour in June 2022. Akita recounts that day. When she retreated to the library’s restroom. When the police arrived and Akita could hear them laughing… with the Nazis. After the interview, Akita breaks down. We conclude with one final flashback: After the Nazis leave, Akita returns to complete the Drag Story Hour reading for the children and families.
afterthelibraryfilm.com
Director
Syra McCarthy
Year
2025
Welcome to the Louise Lawrence Transgender Archive
An introduction video to the Louise Lawrence Transgender Archive, made for participation in a conference of transgender archivists in Italy in 2021.
Director
Lorin Murphy
Year
2021
Teth (Nipple)
After his gender affirming top surgery, a son and father’s new relationship is disrupted when their dog steals a fallen nipple to chew on. Teth is a heartwarming Welsh Language comedy that provides vital representation to the trans-male community.
Director
Peter Darney
Year
2024
Buena vida y poca vergüenza (Live large no shame)
A young trans woman gets locked out of the apartment she’s supposed to be watching and has no choice but to ask for help from the building’s superintendent, a middle-aged man with Down syndrome who quickly wins her trust and affection.
Live large, no shame is a story about an unexpected encounter, a moment of urban poetry that captures the magic of diversity.
Director
Ana Colato & Guadalupe Sanz
Year
2025
Babyteeth
On the night his alcoholic mother relapses, a trans teen discovers something monstrous lurking just beneath the skin of his fractured home… When young Toni becomes convinced that a monster is hiding under his bed, his best friend Marcus joins him for a sleepover to prove it’s all in his imagination. But as the night deepens, unsettling events make it clear that something terrifying lurks in the shadows.
https://www.jawdropfilmsllc.com/babyteeth
Director
Paul X Sanchez IV
Year
2024
Gender Ideology
We look at a moment of “Gender Ideology” which frightens all world leaders.
What do they do in their daily lives and what is on their woke agenda?
https://ecemdalgakiranlar.tilda.ws/genderideology
Director
Ecem Dalgakıranlar
Year
2025
Unburied
Unburied” is a haunting exploration of identity and acceptance, set against the backdrop of contemporary Nigeria. The film follows Alex, a non-binary individual from a conservative Yoruba family and a strict Pentecostal community, as they navigate the treacherous path toward self-discovery. Confronted by family rejection, societal transphobia, and religious condemnation, Alex’s journey unfolds in a dark, metaphorical forest where they are both literally and figuratively running from their past. This sinister setting is haunted by a masquerade that embodies the societal pressures and deep-seated fears aiming to erase their identity. Employing elements of suspense and the supernatural, “Unburied” is a poignant narrative that delves into the struggles and resilience required to live authentically. It highlights the challenges faced by transgender and non-binary individuals in Nigeria, advocating for acceptance and the fundamental human right to one’s true self.
Director
Ayo Lawson
Year
2025
Eden (باغ عدن)
Roya, recently reunited with former lover Nuisha, returns to the Los Angeles suburbs, adjusting to life after their mother’s death. Seeking connection, they visit an all-women’s yoga studio, a space filled with openly queer and trans individuals. For Roya, the studio is both a revelation and a challenge, its liberating energy clashes with their conservative upbringing in an Iranian Jewish family. Tension escalates when they clash with Arta, a trans man, but sparks fly between them, leading to an unexpected connection. As Roya navigates their evolving feelings for both Nuisha and Arta, they’re forced to confront the tension between their family’s expectations and their own desires. Eden is a heartfelt exploration of embracing one’s true identity, even when it means breaking free from the past.
Director
Rustin Zam-Zam Madadi
Year
2024
THE MARTIAL FOREST
In a dystopian present, exiled Kung Fu master Big Sister 13 leads a crew of Trans and Queer fighters who reclaim a forgotten zone and transform it into the Martial Forest—a secret training ground where care is as powerful as combat. Together, they fight to survive rising violence and build a future rooted in chosen family and trans resistance.
https://www.thefirstkissofthenight.com
Director
J Triangular
Year
2025