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Acts of Resistance

🕒 5:00 PM
📅 September 21, 2025

This program explores how trans* resistance is deeply connected to media-making, friendship, community building, and relationships with the land – relationships shaped and constrained by settler-colonialism, political oppression, and existential violence. Drawing on Frantz Fanon’s idea that liberation is a necessary precondition, these films reveal how “trans” is central to reclaiming subjectivity from the oppressive state.

General Admission

$13.00

TICKET BUNDLE OFFER: Get 15% off automatically when you purchase tickets to four different screenings in a single order. Or go all in with a Festival Pass for guaranteed access to all events and workshops!

Festival Pass
$ 99.00

Description

Travesti Opening

In the heart of Medellin- Colombia, ‘Travesti Opening’ unveils a tale of defiance and survival as La Tiana leads her gang: the travesti gang, rebels against binary norms, survivors of continuous persecution. They show us the power of friendship and self-creation. We can’t guarantee that after watching, you won’t become a travesti yourself, as it happened to the director.

Wakashu

A group of men stalk a trans woman at night, unbeknownst to them that she’s the master of a martial arts dojo, and is waiting for them. Now she’ll have to defend herself with all her strength against the violence that surrounds her.

Squeal

Squeal is a supernatural horror film about a police officer who ventures somewhere he doesn’t belong, uncovering a world beyond his worst nightmares. Within the nightclub Silencio, we follow a man’s descent into hell at the hands of a queer community eager for revenge. Squeal is an ode to good trash and bad taste: a trans woman’s fantasy, borne out of Starmer’s Britain.

Pace

Struggling with dysphoria, a boxer wrestles with the decision to transition at the potential cost of their marriage. When another boxer who shares their identity enters the gym, the two find solace in training together while navigating their own challenging journeys.

THE MARTIAL FOREST

In a dystopian future, exiled Kung Fu master Big Sister 13 leads a gang 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.

Forest Echoes

A love story set against the backdrop of the climate crisis and the opioid epidemic, Forest Echoes follows Echo and Wild, two urban Indigenous land defenders. On the one-year anniversary of their arrest on the front lines, a death in their community opens old wounds but also offers them a chance to heal.

WALK OF IRIS

“Walk of Iris” is a 20-minute documentary that intimately follows the powerful journey of Iris, a resilient trans activist based in Istanbul. Filmed over 1.5 years, the documentary captures her determined efforts to fight for equality in the face of systemic oppression, while offering an unfiltered look at the personal struggles behind her public persona. From protests to public speeches, Iris’s voice emerges as a symbol of courage and defiance, standing up for the rights of her community in a society that often silences them.

Your Favorite Late Night Show’s Favorite Late Night Show

This film follows “Late Stage Live,” a Transgender-run political late night show hosted by Ella Yurman, the episode before the 2025 American election.

Event Details

Date: September 21, 2025

Start time: 05:00 p.m. EDT

End time: 07:00 p.m. EDT

Venue: Union Française de Montréal

Coordinates: 429 Avenue Viger E, Montréal, QC H2L 2N9

Directions: Union Française is just a 4‑minute walk from Champ‑de‑Mars Metro station (Orange Line) and a 7‑minute walk from Berri–UQAM. You can also arrive by bus (14, 30, 50, 150, 350, 361, 445) or bike. The venue is fully accessible. The front entrance has a few steps, but our back entrance is step‑free. We’ll have clear signs to guide you to the accessible entrance.

Montréal’s first trans film festival.

EXPOSURES exists on the territories of the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation, who are the custodians of the land and waters of Tio’tia:ke (Montreal). Alongside this necessary but inadequate territorial recognition, we demand restitution and reparation for Indigenous peoples across all of “Canada”.

Exposures © 2024. All Rights Reserved.

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