Strangely, improbably, as we move toward Oscar season, there are two trans films that are considered serious contenders for major awards – including one that could possibly even land best picture.
To say that this has never happened before is an understatement. The Oscars tend to be an extremely heteronormative affair – you have to go back to 2017 to see the last time Hollywood honored a queer-themed film for best picture with Moonlight, and looking back before that, the LGBTQ+ representation is very, very sparse. What you’ll find even less of is trans representation at the Oscars – the Academy awards had existed for 89 years before a single film platforming a trans story with a trans actor won any award at all (it was A Fantastic Woman in 2018, in which its star, Daniela Vega, helped it win best foreign language film) and there has been very little since.
