Chal­leng­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tion and cen­tring trans com­mu­ni­ty and craft at TITE 2025

Dublin’s Smith­field Plaza is a wide, cob­bled expanse lined by bright cafes, block-colour signs, and tall, thin lamp­posts like met­al flamin­gos. Most days it looks like a uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus in a dream, but on the Sun­day of the inau­gur­al Trans Image / Trans Expe­ri­ence Fes­ti­val (TITE), a sun­ny morn­ing in late April, I arrived to find the square full of hors­es. Each month, a group made up most­ly of Irish Trav­ellers arrives to con­tin­ue the cen­turies-old tra­di­tion of Smith­field Horse Fairs, against the will of the Gar­daí, devel­op­ers and res­i­dents. Local ani­mal char­i­ties are con­cerned about the hors­es’ wel­fare on the cob­bles, but the city says it doesn’t have the funds to relo­cate the fair. And the Trav­ellers – who are forcibly exclud­ed from many jobs, hous­es and pub­lic ser­vices in Ire­land – are not will­ing to give up anoth­er ele­ment of their pub­lic life.

It was a fit­ting con­text for Ireland’s first trans and non­bi­na­ry film fes­ti­val. Under­neath the plaza, across two-and-a-bit days and two screens of the Light House Cin­e­ma, the fight to main­tain minori­tised pub­lic life was a con­stant top­ic of both art and con­ver­sa­tion. Pan­el­lists con­tin­u­al­ly dis­cussed the scarci­ty of Arts Coun­cil fund­ing for trans film­mak­ers, and the state of Irish trans health­care (bad); the UK Supreme Court judg­ment about ​‘bio­log­i­cal sex’, passed the pre­vi­ous week, and Trump’s anti-trans cru­sade in the US were on everyone’s minds. Yet the mood wasn’t bleak. Hav­ing this enclave of transness and trans film avail­able, for two-and-a-bit days on the Light House mez­za­nine, felt like a mir­a­cle. Atten­dees were open, friend­ly, relieved. The sense of being shel­tered from hos­tile scruti­ny was palpable.

When gift­ed a new con­text, you’re allowed to think more about what you want. One of TITE’s stat­ed aims was ​“to shift the focus of trans film from rep­re­sen­ta­tion to craft”: the fes­ti­val pro­gramme was sat­u­rat­ed with rep­re­sen­ta­tion, forc­ing a change in rubric. The load-bear­ing fig­ure of the sin­gu­lar trans char­ac­ter, and their bur­den to eth­i­cal­ly and accu­rate­ly speak to uni­ver­sal transness, was replaced with a daz­zling polypho­ny of trans char­ac­ters and images. It felt strange to scroll Let­ter­boxd reviews of Toron­to-based fea­ture Soft, a bru­tal yet gor­geous ​‘love let­ter to queer child­hood’, and see how many peo­ple were tak­ing issue with its por­tray­als of ado­les­cent sex­u­al­i­ty and pet­ty crime, wor­ry­ing that it makes queer com­mu­ni­ties ​‘look bad’. That scarci­ty men­tal­i­ty felt like it came from some­where a mil­lion miles away.

Instead, TITE man­aged to craft a feel­ing of intense abun­dance under restric­tive cir­cum­stances, from the colour­ful zine and art stalls in the wait­ing area to the sheer breadth of the pro­gramme (40 shorts, 8 fea­tures, 13 coun­tries). It was, admit­ted­ly, hard to find much time to decom­press or process with­in the festival’s tight sched­ule, which at times left bare­ly five min­utes between screen­ings. I joined a group who were try­ing to catch all 11 shows, but I tapped out at nine, rue­ful­ly skip­ping a 10^th to split arti­sanal piz­zas around the cor­ner with a table of film­mak­ers and vol­un­teers. (Not to val­i­date stereo­types, but all the best things I ate in Dublin involved some com­bi­na­tion of pota­to and bread. The pota­to-pancetta piz­za at Bonobo was no exception.)

The fes­ti­val wasn’t enclos­ing for every­one, but it was for me. I didn’t see the muse­ums or cas­tles; I only saw the Riv­er Lif­fey, which bisects the city cen­tre like a wire through bread, on the ways out and in. Dublin, for me, was a blur of grey cob­ble­stones and faces, some­thing friend­ly but kept out of reach – per­haps fit­ting for a city seized by a vicious hous­ing cri­sis. But I don’t regret giv­ing the city up to try to see every­thing; for some­one like me, who hasn’t seen much trans film­mak­ing beyond the sliv­er that makes it to wide release, TITE was essen­tial­ly a crash course in ​‘the scene.’ It was also a notice­ably high-qual­i­ty low-filler pro­gramme, regard­less of the ear­ly-career sta­tus of many of its filmmakers.

One recur­ring thread in the fes­ti­val was a trans inter­ro­ga­tion of the pres­sure to be like­able, sym­pa­thet­ic, fund­able. ​“I want­ed to tap into the worst pos­si­ble ver­sion of myself, about what I imag­ine myself to be when I’m cat­a­strophis­ing, and to try to have empa­thy for that per­son,” not­ed direc­tor Liadán Roche in a Q&A. Sev­er­al oth­er direc­tors and actors picked up on that theme of exploit­ing cat­a­strophi­sa­tion, both for the pur­pose of com­e­dy (as in impro­vised com­e­dy fea­ture Dog Movie, about a pas­sive-aggres­sive cou­ple and their cheer­ful­ly incom­pe­tent lodger) and of hor­ror (as in the hous­ing hor­ror short Stag­mite, or the rat­tling­ly bleak rape-revenge short Glo­ry, Hole). Dog Movie’s Bloo is a hilar­i­ous­ly infu­ri­at­ing house­mate, but the film ends on a sequence that is a sin­cere, affec­tion­ate paean to their nomadic, non-goal-ori­ent­ed way of life; Roche’s short, Ter­ratoma, also ends on a moment of peace for its trau­ma­tised main char­ac­ter, reach­ing beyond the harm she has done and the bad art she has made.

Along­side that explo­ration of ​‘trans expe­ri­ence’, the fes­ti­val show­cased a lot of for­mal inno­va­tion about what con­sti­tutes a ​‘trans image’ – from hyper­sat­u­rat­ed ani­mat­ed bat­tles to stop-motion pos­ses­sion hor­ror – and about work­ing with lim­it­ed resources. The most com­pelling exper­i­ments in the pro­gramme includ­ed True Receiv­er, a hand­paint­ed 16mm film work I described to a friend as resem­bling an ​‘angry kalei­do­scope’, and Dragk­ing High­way, a ​‘DIY dig­i­tal road movie’ about trans­fem­i­nine hitch­hik­ing com­bin­ing audio con­ver­sa­tions with dis­ori­en­tat­ing 3D ren­der­ings of roads, streets and gas sta­tions. There was also a notable spe­cial­ism in low-bud­get/DIY genre come­dies, such as house favourite short 7G: The Fight Against Phones and rol­lick­ing mid­night fea­ture Spir­it Ris­er, which includes a sidesplit­ting­ly fun­ny and engag­ing car chase where the cars are very obvi­ous­ly not mov­ing. (Spir­it Ris­er also fea­tures Pat­ti Har­ri­son as a homi­ci­dal­ly incom­pe­tent babysit­ter and Kate Born­stein as God; nev­er have I been so grate­ful that trans peo­ple tend to know each other.)

I expect­ed TITE, in its pri­ori­ti­sa­tion of trans-made and trans-crewed film, to poten­tial­ly be reliant on North Amer­i­can fare, but it was pleas­ing to see strong offer­ings from Nor­way, South Korea, Por­tu­gal, Ger­many, the Nether­lands and India. Poten­tial­ly the best short in the whole pro­gramme was Boni­ta Rajpurohit’s iykyk (if you know you know), a lumi­nous, off­beat, and excru­ci­at­ing take on trans-cis dat­ing. There’s a scene where main char­ac­ter Kusum and her date are paint­ing each oth­er with body paint, and he makes an off-colour com­ment, and Kusum’s face – in tight focus against a blur of pale wall – changes. In the cen­tre of the frame is the neon smear of fin­ger paint on her cheek, a quick­ly fail­ing sug­ges­tion of inti­ma­cy and under­stand­ing. It breaks your heart.

Yet the fes­ti­val was also defined by its local and com­mu­nal flavour, and by the col­lab­o­ra­tions of trans film­mak­ers, actors and crew in the UK and Ire­land band­ing togeth­er in response to their dele­git­imiza­tion in the wider indus­try. Despite feel­ing like an enclave/​haven, the fes­ti­val was unusu­al­ly well-anchored in the local com­mu­ni­ty and its needs, with pre-film pre­sen­ta­tions from Ireland’s Queer Asian Pride net­work and from CATU, Ireland’s pre-emi­nent ten­ants union. Recog­nis­ing trans con­cerns around hous­ing, health­care, and com­mu­ni­ty sup­port was built into the fes­ti­val struc­ture. I got a sense that being able to give your­self over to film, for the TITE team, was aid­ed by your bod­i­ly and social needs being recog­nised and held.

I think what touched me most, along­side the most inti­mate films in the ros­ter, was see­ing the organ­is­ers and vol­un­teers at work: sprawled on sofas half-asleep as the mid­night show­ing on Sat­ur­day drew to a close; excit­ed­ly dis­cussing the prospec­tive awards list in the café on Sun­day morn­ing; stand­ing around a lit­tle bemused at the end of the fes­ti­val, hav­ing clear­ly not thought ahead to what they were going to do after­wards. After the cin­e­ma closed, I joined five oth­er atten­dees in an Airbnb over­look­ing the tram­line, and we talked, with­out stop­ping, until 4:30AM. Sev­er­al peo­ple have already offered to organ­ise the after­par­ty for next year.