Best movies like Lily: A Transgender Story

Featuring seven stories from seven auteurs from around the world, the film chronicles this unprecedented moment in time, and is a true love letter to the power of cinema and its storytellers.

A Vietnam vet decides to undergo a sex change operation in the 1970's.

After running away from an orphanage, young Alicia Jones disguises herself as a boy and gets a job on a farm. She falls in love with Harry Deigan, a farmhand who knows her secret, but when the farm's owner finds out, he fires her. Alicia is forced to return to the city, where she meets up with a wealthy man who adopts her. He turns out to be Thomas Deigan, the half-brother of Alice's love Harry Deigan. Harry finds out that Thomas is his half-brother, but also finds out something that could change his, Thomas' and Alicia's lives forever.

A Boy Named Sue chronicles the transformation of a transsexual named Theo from a woman to a man over the course of six years. Following Theo's physiological and psychological changes during the process, as well as their effects on his lesbian lover and community of close friends, A Boy Named Sue tells a story about gender identity, relationships, and how even things that seem permanent can change.

In the 1970s, a foundling lass, Patrick "Kitten" Braden, comes of age by leaving her Irish town for London, in part to look for her mother and in part because her transgender nature is beyond the town's understanding.

The story of Gwen Araujo, a transgender teen who was murdered in California in 2002.

When Gerda Wegener asks her husband Einar to fill in as a portrait model, Einar discovers the person she's meant to be and begins living her life as Lili Elbe. Having realized her true self and with Gerda's love and support, Lili embarks on a groundbreaking journey as a transgender pioneer.

Paul reunites with his schoolmate Kim, and finds out she's actually a woman who has transitioned since they last met. She has no desire to stir up the past and they start to fall in love, but Paul's immaturity gets them in trouble.

In 1972, John Wojtowicz attempted to rob a Brooklyn bank to pay for his lover’s sex-change operation. The story was the basis for the film Dog Day Afternoon. The Dog captures John, who shares his story for the first time in his own unique, offensive, hilarious and heartbreaking way. We gain a historic perspective on New York's gay liberation movement, in which Wojtowicz played an active role. In later footage, he remains a subversive force, backed by the unconditional love of his mother Terry, whose wit and charm infuse the film. How and why the bank robbery took place is recounted in gripping detail by Wojtowicz and various eyewitnesses.

Middle-class parents are confounded when their son brings home his new partner: an elegant, confusingly androgynous West Indian.

Anything’s Possible is a delightfully modern Gen Z coming-of-age story that follows Kelsa, a confident high school girl who is trans, as she navigates through senior year. When her classmate Khal gets a crush on her, he musters up the courage to ask her out, despite the drama he knows it could cause. What transpires is a romance that showcases the joy, tenderness, and pain of young love.

Transgender high school athletes from across the country compete at the top of their fields, while also challenging the boundaries and perceptions of fairness and discrimination.

Filmmaker Kimberly Reed returns home for her high school reunion, ready to reintroduce herself to the small town as a transgender woman and hoping for reconciliation with her long-estranged adopted brother Marc. Things are complicated by the shocking revelation that Marc may be the grandson of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth, forcing Kim and her family to explore questions of sexual orientation, identity, severe trauma and love.

A documentary on the work of sex-change specialist Dr. Leo Wollman, including interviews with Dr. Wollman and a few of his patients, with an illustrated lecture on the various aspects of transsexuality plus actual footage of a sex-change operation, which is what gives the film its notoriety

Where does voguing come from, and what, exactly, is throwing shade? This landmark documentary provides a vibrant snapshot of the 1980s through the eyes of New York City's African American and Latinx Harlem drag-ball scene. Made over seven years, PARIS IS BURNING offers an intimate portrait of rival fashion "houses," from fierce contests for trophies to house mothers offering sustenance in a world rampant with homophobia, transphobia, racism, AIDS, and poverty. Featuring legendary voguers, drag queens, and trans women — including Willi Ninja, Pepper LaBeija, Dorian Corey, and Venus Xtravaganza.

Paul, a 20 year old midwesterner, arrives at the central bus station and quickly catches eyes with Wye, a 22 year old girl voguing on the sidewalk. After Paul seeks her out in secret, an intense love between them blossoms. But when Paul discovers Wye is trans, he is forced to confront his own identity and what it means to belong.

A 12-year-old girl faces a father she hardly remembers after his transition into a woman.

This true story, which takes place in Fort Campbell, KY, tells the heart-wrenching story of the life and tragic death of soldier Barry Winchell. His love for Calpernia Addams, a transgender nightclub performer, was misunderstood by his fellow soldiers and eventually led to his murder.

This moving documentary chronicles the last year in the life of Robert Eads, a trans man dying of ovarian cancer. We're introduced to several prominent figures in Robert's life -- most importantly, his life partner and caretaker Lola Cola, who is also trans. The two prepare to lead a panel at the annual Southern Comfort conference, a yearly event created for transgender individuals.

Andy Warhol described Jackie Curtis as “A pioneer without a frontier.” In this biographical documentary, Curtis’s co-workers and friends speak of her work and her influence, along with clips from Curtis’s Warhol films as well as never-before-seen footage from her stage shows.

Bree is about to get a sex reassignment surgery that will finally allow her to actually be what she’s already been in her mind for a long time: a transitioned woman. Yet before this happens she suddenly runs into her son who ends up coming for the trip across the United States.

Two oddball Berliners discover the abandoned appendages of a mannequin. Separately, and with grotesque consequence, they come to terms with their disjointed mate.

A teenager transitions from female to male, and his family must come to terms with that fact.

Football star Charlie has the world at her feet. With a top club desperate to sign her, her future is seemingly mapped out. But the teenager sees only a nightmare. Raised as a boy, Charlie is torn between wanting to live up to her father's expectations and shedding this ill fitting skin.

A lifelong Carolina farm girl, now in her early 20's, Grace has dreamed all her life of the day when "Mr. Right" slips a Princess Cut diamond on her finger and swears to love her forever. Tonight may be that night as Stewart has something special planned after 15 months together! But when things don't go as planned, and romance crashes down around her, it launches her on a quest, aided by her father, to understand what it means to truly love another person. Will Grace finally discover love or ruin her chances for happiness forever?

Christine Jorgensen goes to 1950s Denmark and makes headlines for having the first sex-change operation.

In the summer of 2015, former US Marine and world record weightlifter Matt "Kroc" Kroczaleski was publicly outed as being transgender. The reaction was universal: her sponsors abandoned her, she was disowned by her parents, banned from competing, and she changed her name to "Janae". This film follows Janae as she attempts to find her place in society. Initially wanting to strip off the muscle and become a much smaller looking woman, she found herself unable to lose the muscle she so desperately gained. She now finds herself living one day as an alpha male and the next day as a delicate girl. Will Janae be able to handle her muscle relapses? Will her passage from being a male bring her the peace she's looking for? Will society accept a 250lbs muscular woman? Is her path personal redemption or physical and psychological disaster?

A 14-year-old boy, struggling with gender identity and religion, begins to use fantasy to escape his life in the inner city and find his passion in the process.

A transgender man and woman face the challenges of maintaining relationships.

Most of us can answer that question without a second thought, but for some people, the answer isn’t so simple. American Transgender takes us firsthand into the daily lives of three individuals—Clair, Jim, and Eli—who each identify with a different gender from the one in which they were born and raised. We witness their struggles and triumphs, and experience their hopes and fears. How do they manage at work, build careers, maintain friendships, and nurture lasting, intimate partnerships? Each of the characters in the film tells their story in their own words as we follow them through life’s daily battles and victories, both large and small.

Couples Ari and Caitlin and Myles and Precious experience the joy of a transgender pregnancy when Ari and Myles, the men in their relationships, become pregnant.

A wife nursing her terminally ill husband finds herself falling for his friend.

"What Sex Am I?" follows a group of Transgender individuals struggling to make their way in every strata of 1980s America. From finding employment to finding acceptance, the first question the world forces them to ask is always, "What Sex Am I?"

A woman leaves her seaside hometown to search for her long-lost brother, experiencing hallucinations brought on by her epilepsy during her trip.

Louis Theroux travels to San Francisco where a group of pioneering medical professionals help children who say they were born in the wrong body transition from boy to girl or girl to boy at ever younger ages.

When Sid comes out as a woman, a 14-year-old boy named Ralph literally shows up at her door announcing that Sid is his dad. Ralph is surprised to discover that his father is now a woman, but thinks having a transgender dad is pretty cool. But Ralph hasn't told his mother and stepdad that he’s tracked down his biological father. And then there is Sid’s boyfriend Daniel, who has yet to tell his family of his relationship with Sid. Daniel is nowhere near ready to accept Ralph as a stepson and complicate his life further. Sid’s coming out has a snowball effect that forces everyone out of the closet. What happens when gender, generations and cultures collide to create a truly modern family?

The intimate bond between two identical twins is challenged when one decides to transition from male to female; this is the story of their evolving relationship, and the resurrection of their family from a darker past.

Set in 1913, 1936 and 2001. When he returns to the casino and seaside resort of his early teens, Louis, a 78 year old man encounters Olivia, a 19 year old young woman madly in love with a violent cad. Louis tells the story of his own mother having a passionate, driven fling with his Italian tennis instructor in 1936, and of Marie Collins Brown, the slightly older widowed woman who helped him through his confusion and pain by recounting the story of her passionate 24 hour fling with a hopeless young Polish gambler in 1913.

A failing radio host finds out she has inherited a farm house in Wales from a family she never knew she had. But what goes on the land is story in which people have gone missing every 20 years. Fixed on repairing her career, she sets off with her friends to make the ultimate discovery for her radio show - but what she discovers may well be what she would least expect - for every 20 years, the Scarecrow will rise, and this time - he's seeking a bride.

Fact-based story about tennis pro Renee Richards, whose player status was challenged in 1976 when it was revealed that she was a trans woman. Flashback to 1964 before she was out as trans, a successful New York doctor with a great lifestyle, a flashy girl friend, and a secret life. Her psychiatrist mother refuses to deal with her and sends her to a colleague who diagnoses with a psychotic gender confusion, which he says can be unlearned. After a failed marriage and parenthood, she comes out as trans, with a new life in California.

Katie Couric travels across the U.S. to talk with scientists, psychologists, activists, authors and families about the complex issue of gender.

Psychotherapist Stella O'Malley considers the huge rise in numbers of young people embarking on gender transition, through the prism of the gender identity issues that she experienced when she was a child.

Strangers June and Charlie wind up double-booked in the same upstate New York Airbnb during the start of COVID-19. Exasperating the situation, the lockdown forces them both to stay and confront the unexpected feelings that develop between them.

Over the course of a single hectic day in New York City, three people from Feña's past are thrust back into his life: his foreign father, his straight ex-boyfriend, and his 13-year old half-sister. Having lost touch since transitioning from female to male, Feña must navigate the new dynamics of these old relationships while tackling the day-to-day challenges that come with living a life in-between.

A young Amish woman, who isn't satisfied with her path at home, visits a cousin for the summer. Over the summer, she is exposed to another world, finds friendship and more. Soon she must choose and come to terms with the life she wants.

Paulo, a young pianist, meets Ilir, a double-bass player originally from Albania. It's love at first sight. Confronted by Anka, Paulo finds himself out on the street. Despite Ilir's misgivings, Paulo moves in with him. One day, when Paulo promises that he will love Ilir for the rest of his life, Ilir leaves the city and doesn't return. A few days later, Paulo finds out that Ilir is in jail, and the two lovers embark on an heart-breaking relationship.

Traces the relationship between Tina, a young Mexican trans woman, and Eliana, her grandmother, as they navigate Tina's transition and struggle to build a life for themselves as undocumented immigrants in New York City.

Focuses on three intersex individuals who overcame shame, secrecy and unauthorized surgery throughout their childhoods to enjoy successful adulthoods, choosing to ignore medical advice to conceal their bodies and coming out as who they truly are.

When Will Ferrell finds out his close friend of 30 years is coming out as a trans woman, the two decide to embark on a cross-country road trip to process this new stage of their relationship in an intimate portrait of friendship, transition, and America.

Political commentator Matt Walsh explores the changing concepts of sex and gender in the digital age, particularly the transgender rights movement, anti-transgender bigotry, and what it means to be a woman.