About
TORI, ANXIOUS ABOUT ATTENDING A HOUSE PARTY, WRESTLES WITH OUTFIT CHOICES WHILE SLOWLY DESCENDING INTO A GENDER CRISIS MELTDOWN.
Tori, a young student, is dreading going to a house party of her friend Kirsty. She tries on multiple outfits, but each fails her. Her anxiety is through the roof as she struggles to explain to Boy, a mysterious person wearing Tori’s features, how a certain skirt only goes with a certain top and how a pair of shoes can make or break an outfit.
Frustrated, she starts pre-drinking on her own while trying to describe her feelings about how things seem to be easier for boys. Unwillingly, she ventures into a discussion on gender identity and how it intersects with her sexuality as a lesbian. She reveals that she would have been called Thomas, were she born a boy, and immediately feels uncomfortable around Boy.
But Boy perseveres, pushing her to explain and investigate her feelings. Lying on her living room floor, she stops fighting Boy and finally lets him in. She decides on an outfit which mirrors Boy’s and confesses her vulnerability, calling Boy by his real name, Thomas. As they share a moment of understanding, we realise that Thomas is a figment of Tori’s imagination, her other half.
Writer/Director statement
As someone who has been exploring their own gender identity, I find that there aren’t many stories about the slow process of realisation you might be trans or non-binary, so I wanted to write a story about the beginning inclinations of such a feeling. There exists a false idea that transgender people owe the world absolutism, and must express their identity confidently and immediately at all costs, otherwise they will be charged with concealing the truth or even lying, which doesn’t give a lot of space for private self-exploration. Tori lives with the same anxieties I experience daily, where deciding what to wear and how you’ll be perceived by your choices makes you freeze up in horror, in the terrible knowledge of being seen.
A short but impactful odyssey leads Tori to finding new understanding within her.
Each room that Tori enters and Thomas follows her into acts as a stage of grief.
The loss of the status quo and belief in her gender identity that she must relinquish in order to accept the change that is happening.