Filmmakers

Don’t even think about it, 2016!

In the trailer, an androgynous character played by Benedict Cumberbatch is asked whether he has “a hot dog or a bun.”

The plot synopsis reads like a generic rom-com, but a series of serpentine twists jerks the story into horrifically dark terrain.

“The only thing you can ever do is make your enemies laugh,” John Waters says in an interview with GayRVA. “Then they’ll consider changing their minds.”

None of the performers in the film are transgender, and director Tom Hooper acknowledges the industry has “a problem” including transgender talent.

This fall season boasts one of the richest, most varied batches of films to ever dramatize the struggles of gay and transgendered people.

U.S. Marine Corps veteran Elegance Bratton was kicked out of his home at the age of 16, spent 10 years homeless, joined the Marines and is now working on a documentary to shed light on youth homelessness in NYC’s West Village.

Marlon Riggs was a filmmaker, educator, poet and gay rights activist. He examined race and sexuality in his documentaries for which he received an Emmy Award and a Peabody Award.

Joan Biren is an internationally recognized photographer and filmmaker who chronicles gay life. Her photographs are on display in the Library of Congress.

Sean Robinson, an openly gay up-and-coming film director, admits that growing up as the youngest child in a family of five — in a “very loving but eccentric Christian household” — in the town alongside the North Carolina-Virginia border, left him with a sense of urgency to make his mark on the world.