Despite being located in one of the most conservative states in the country, the SXSW Film Festival has long demonstrated a progressive outlook with its documentary program. It’s an interesting mix of documentaries at SXSW that can be divided into three categories: fiction, pop culture stories, and movies with a message. This is the posting of three profiles for the final section: Two character profiles are also about extreme acceptance and a piece about how the digital age is disrupting evolution.
Amy Jenkins “Adam’s apple,” the best doc I saw at this year’s SXSW, it might pass as more of someone else’s home movies. This would be wrong. Not only is the combination of years of Jenkins’ personal filmmaking of his son Adam’s journey remarkably well organized, but there is a risk here that should not be minimized by assuming that this kind of portrayal is remotely simplistic.
A heartwarming family story, “Apple’s Apple” is a tale of empowerment and the normal parent-child dynamic. In many ways, it’s the latter that makes the former more powerful in that, yes, this is the story of a young transgender man, but it’s also one of those universal coming-of-age stories like choosing a college, falling in love, and even crashing your first car. It’s a great work that connects both as a story of supportive collaboration through the eyes of a mother who happens to be filming and as a reminder that trans kids go through many of the same road marks as cis.
“Apple’s Apple” is the story of a young man becoming a changed man. Over eight years, Jenkins photographed her son Adam through both normal and unusual moments, including hormone replacement therapy, a legal name change, and surgery. Adam Jenkins is an interesting subject, someone Amy realizes not to witness from afar but to form part of the filmmaking journey, too. He often handles the camera and appears to be a participant rather than a subject. It’s no surprise to learn at the end that you are pursuing a degree in Creative Writing.
Both Amy and Adam are careful not to turn her story into a text message film, focusing on the reality of these formative years more than anything else. The result is a film that never settles on the journey of a trans youth, allowing Adam to serve as a role model for being who he is. He is also very eloquent. In one of the film’s most powerful moments, Adam’s father tries to thread the needle by commenting on how he enjoys knowing Adam but misses the daughter he had. Adam reveals that he still has a child with him and says, “I don’t want to be seen as the prodigal daughter. It’s a simple but remarkably insightful statement. The film is full of them.
“Adam’s Apple” is also a book about parenting and growing up that is often not about being small and changing as much as it is about the universal combination of pride and sadness that comes with saying goodbye to a child. It might strike me as someone who has a son applying to colleges right now, but I think anyone can find truth in this emotionally raw work as a reminder that we shouldn’t “other” kids who are changing not just in sports but in all aspects of young life. Jenkins has a line early in the film as he films a caterpillar developing a chrysalis: “I love watching time go by.” Time is both a blessing and a curse for parents. “Adam’s apple” is a reminder to embrace both.
A front-of-your-face approach to trans issues works well at Luchina Fisher “Fathers,” an extension of his Emmy-winning Netflix short of the same name (in a career that’s still surprisingly short at 72 minutes). While making a film about a group of transgender fathers, Trump 2.0 was introduced to the world, changing the temperature of the project completely. What began ostensibly as a project designed to listen to men talk about overcoming their own prejudices to support their transgender children became the script of a backwards world.
These men ended up not only supporting their children with words but fighting for them in the courts, while others ended up turning their backs on this because of the fear of what it means to trade in America in the 2020s. It makes for a film that sometimes feels like it’s trying to tell too many stories in too short of a time, but it’s still a burning reminder that it’s very difficult out there to be trans, or even just to be a trans person.
The subjects in “The Dads” include men like Stephen Chukumba, a widowed father of four whose trans son Hobbes is off to college, and Ed Diaz, a Texan father of a transplanted toddler who faces the difficult decision to flee the country to protect them. These men are vulnerable and honest in front of Fisher’s camera, telling their stories but also revealing their fears as the world changes dramatically in November 2024.
Again, we hear stories of trans people being persecuted in this country, but movies like “The Dads” put human faces in the numbers, legal decisions and headlines. Also, it sometimes feels like it’s trying to do too much in 70 minutes; there is a version that really wastes time at the Dads Retreat in June 2024, this movie feels rushed to reach the election a few months later. Seeing these men and their children talking in June 2024 about their hopes for the future when the Democrats are re-elected to the White House is very sad. What could have been.
Finally, there’s Sara Robin “I beg your attention,” another documentary about people trying to protect our children in a world where their safety seems to be less and less every day. As a parent of three children who have had to navigate the impact of social media, there are issues raised by Robin’s film that need to be a bigger part of the national conversation.
As a film, Robin makes frustrating decisions like losing focus, repeating talking points, and cherry-picking ways to show social media or nostalgia for a time that never really existed—body image issues weren’t invented by the internet; enlarged to confirm, but the opening scenes of “YAP” are long enough that they may not have actually existed or are still in fragments today. The narrator talks about a time when the kids meet randomly on the weekend as if everyone is sitting alone on their phone now. As a father, I can personally attest that a lot of this is not as black and white as this movie wants it to be. Benefits such as physically or socially disabled access, representation, communication, and information are undermined by the fear of social media.
Having said all that, panic is justified, especially that of the inspirational Kristin Bride, who advocated for legal restrictions on social media after the suicide of her son, who was being bullied online. The truth is that there is a generation that is sorely lost in the development of social media. Children are now being taught about the dangers of technology as they should have been from the beginning; My son’s high school has a strict phone policy like the one depicted in the movie, and it worked just as well as it did here. People like the Bride and celebrities Trisha Prahbu will ensure that future generations do not fall into the trap of social media that swallowed many of the last. Prahbu founded a company called ReThink, simply asking the youth “are you sure?” when they are about to send something cruel. Surprisingly, 93% of teenagers delete bullying comments. The truth is that we know the difference between right and wrong, but the tools enable us to forget. This is one of the most interesting movie ideas.
Above all, the testimony from the parents in “Your Attention Please” is heartbreaking. It can be so touching when it’s focused on them that it takes away the frustration I have with filming in other places. As Vivek Murphy says in the film, “We’ve never had enough of a conversation about it [the impact of social media on youth] as a community.” That is undeniably true. And this film will help with that. And how can anyone listen to Kristin Bride and not want to please her? You deserve ALL of our attention.
