Melbourne’s Trans and Gender Diverse Film Festival TILDE is underway for another year, with festival directors Louise Malcolm and Cal Andrews delivering another stellar program loosely grouped under the theme of family, chosen or otherwise. With attacks on Australia’s trans and gender diverse community ongoing under the guise of religious freedom, now, more than ever, it’s important we hear from trans people directly, both here and overseas.
In that spirit, here are five films we reckon sound brilliant at this year’s TILDE.
Muxes
US-based, Italian-born director Ivan Olita shot V Magazine’s Gaga on Gaga with the A Star is Born legend. Here he travels to Mexico’s southern state of Oaxaca to record, in beautiful detail, the life stories of the muxes. Recognised by the Indigenous Zapotec people as a third gender, the name means both fear and feminine, with one muxe noting they embrace that duality as a symbol of strength. Friday, November 9 at 7.30pm
Mrs McCutcheon
Winning Best Australian Short Film at last year’s Melbourne International Film Festival and the audience award for best short at this year’s Melbourne Queer Film Festival, the whole family will dig this Australian gem from director John Sheedy. Alec Golinger stars as a young kid who just wants to wear a dress and the fab Virginia gay as a wonderfully supportive teacher. Saturday, November 10 at 3pm
Great Again
Just in time for the midterm fallout, this Australian short by director Kirrilee Bailey takes us back two years to November 2016, just after you know who seized the White House. It’s in that washout of that unexpected upheaval that Jordan,a young, queer, non-binary person, goes back to the bush to visit their Evangelical Christian family and discovers their mum has taken to wearing a bright red Make America Great Again cap.
Saturday, November 10 at 7.30pm
Leitis in Waiting
Speaking of undue American influence and religious intolerance, filmmakers Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, Dean Hamer and Joe Wilson shine a light on the pushback against American-financed evangelicals looking to resurrect colonial-era laws criminalising Tonga’s trans women, or leitis, in this empowering feature documentary. Joey Mataele leads the fight to reclaim their rightful place in the South Pacific Kingdom’s cultural fabric, organising a beauty pageant with some right royal help. Sunday, November 11 at 3pm
Man Made
TILDE wraps for another year with Real Man Adventures author T Cooper’s feature-length documentary about four trans men from very different backgrounds who have found strength both physical and internal competing in Trans Fit Con, the world’s onlytransgender bodybuilding competition. Examining notions of masculinity, it confronts everything from mental health and homelessness to coming out and nurturing loving relationships. Winning Outstanding Documentary Feature at LA Outfest, it’s going to be an emotional roller coaster. Sunday, November 11 at 6.30pm
Tilde is at Melbourne’s Footscray Community Arts Centre November 8-11. For more info, click here. 
