#3. Venus Boyz (2002)

Storyline: This intimate look into the real world of drag kings -- women exploring their masculinity -- crosses continents, traveling through drag king nightclubs from New York to London. Through interviews and on-stage performances, every subject reveals a different reason for choosing the gender they have. The film is less a critique than an exploration of a world that is increasingly becoming mainstream, as the featured protagonists question exactly how gender works, and should work, in modern society.

Plot Keywords: performer, transgender woman, friend, inspiring, moving, powerful, nightclub ...

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#4. Boys Don't Cry (1999)

Storyline: Based on actual events. Brandon Teena is the popular new guy in a tiny Nebraska town. He hangs out with the guys, drinking, cussing, and bumper surfing, and he charms the young women, who've never met a more sensitive and considerate young man. Life is good for Brandon, now that he's one of the guys and dating hometown beauty Lana; however, he's forgotten to mention one important detail. It's not that he's wanted in another town for GTA and other assorted crimes, but that Brandon Teena was actually born a woman named Teena Brandon. When his best friends make this discovery, Brandon's life is ripped apart.

Plot Keywords: transsexual, love interest, friend, criminal, bleak, emotional, bar ...

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#5. Offside (2006)

Storyline: Tehran, and possibly the whole of Iran, is galvanised by a match to be played at the Azadi stadium between Bahrain and Iran, the victor of which will qualify for the World Cup. Although women are banned from watching, a number of them, undeterred, attempt to buy tickets and enter disguised as men. Funny and fierce in equal measure Offside was filmed during the actual Iran versus Bahrain match in Tehran in 2005.

Plot Keywords: teenager, friend, police officer, soldier, offbeat, touching, inspiring ...

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#6. Osama (2003)

Storyline: The Taliban are ruling Afghanistan, they being a repressive regime especially for women, who, among other things, are not allowed to work. This situation is especially difficult for one family consisting solely of three women representing three successive generations. All the males in their family have died in various Afghani wars. The mother had been working as a nurse in a hospital, but regardless of she not being allowed to work, the Taliban has cut off funding to the hospital. The mother and grandmother make what they feel is the only decision they can to survive: they will have the preteen daughter masquerade as a boy so that she can get a job to support the family. The daughter, feeling powerless, agrees despite being scared as if the Taliban discover her masquerade, she is certain they will kill her. Partly as a symbolic measure, the daughter plants a lock of her now cut hair in a pot so that her lost femininity can flourish. The only people outside the family who know of the ruse are the milk vendor who employs the daughter - he who was a friend of her deceased father - and a local boy named Espandi who recognizes her despite her outward change in appearance. Espandi renames her Osama. The masquerade becomes more difficult when the Taliban recruit all the local boys to school, which includes military training.—Huggo

Plot Keywords: nurse, daughter, soldier, student, disheartening, suspenseful, moving ...

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#7. Trantasia (2006)

Storyline: In 2004, Las Vegas promoters planning a review starring Jahna Steele invite trans women to participate in "The World's Most Beautiful Transsexual Pageant," a two-day contest from which eight women would be offered jobs in the review. About 20 women arrive for all-night rehearsals and the pageant itself: swimsuit, evening gown, and talent competition, the selection of eight finalists and three prize winners. We follow the women backstage and get in-depth profiles of six: two from Chicago and one each from LA, San Francisco, San Antonio, and Columbia, South Carolina. We meet their families, and we learn about their lives and their journeys of self-discovery and acceptance.—<jhailey@hotmail.com>

Plot Keywords: transsexual, performer, mother, father, contestant, filmmaker, touching ...

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#8. The Danish Girl (2015)

Storyline: Copenhagen, Denmark, 1926. Einar Wegener (played by Eddie Redmayne) and his wife Gerda (Alicia Vikander) are a happily married couple. Both are artists, Einar preferring landscapes and she portraits. One day Einar poses for a portrait of Gerda's while wearing a dress. This is initially done as a lark, as is the later attendance at a party dressed as a woman. However, Einar soon discovers that she is in fact a woman and over time prefers being Lili. At first she and Gerda try to have her situation "cured" but this leads nowhere (other than to many doctors trying to have Lili locked up as a pervert and/or lunatic). Her voyage of self-discovery will ultimately lead to her undergoing the first ever sex-change operation.

Plot Keywords: artist, painter, artist's model, transgender woman, surgeon, emotional, endearing ...

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#10. Just Charlie (2017)

Storyline: Football star Charlie has the world at his feet. With a top club desperate to sign him, his future is seemingly mapped out. But the teenager only sees a nightmare. Trapped in the body of a boy, Charlie is torn between wanting to live up to her father's expectations and shedding this ill fitting skin. Charlie's next move will tear the family apart and threaten everything they hold dear.

Plot Keywords: soccer player, star player, teen boy, father, family, emotional, endearing ...

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#11. M. Butterfly (1993)

Storyline: During the Cultural Revolution in China in the mid-1960s, a French diplomat falls in love with a singer in the Beijing Opera. Interwoven with allusions to the Puccini opera "Madama Butterfly", a story of love and betrayal unfolds.—Michael C. Berch <mcb@postmodern.com>

Plot Keywords: diplomat, opera singer, lover, intricate, melodramatic, beijing, china ...

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#12. The Ballad of Little Jo (1993)

Storyline: Based on a true story, this is the tale of Josephine Monaghan, a young woman of the mid nineteenth century who is thrown out of her parents' home after being seduced by the family's portrait photographer and giving birth to his child. Josephine quickly learns that young, female, pretty, and alone are a bad combination for life in the wild west. In her desperation to survive, Josephine disguises herself as "Jo", a young man, and struggles to make a life for herself in a dingy frontier mining town. Can "Little Jo" live and love without revealing his secret?—Martin Lewison <lewison@pitt.edu>

Plot Keywords: young woman, stableman, shepherd, wife, laborer, businessman, powerful ...

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#13. Albert Nobbs (2011)

Storyline: In 19th century Dublin, Albert Nobbs, an eccentric man in the latter part of middle age, works as a waiter in Morrison's Hotel run by the stingy and controlling Marge Baker. Albert is hard working and saves his money so that one day he will be able to eke out a better life for himself by owning his own business rather than work at the hotel. Beyond his work colleagues, he is all alone in the world. One day, a man named Hubert Page is hired by Mrs. Baker to paint one of the rooms in the hotel. She forces Hubert to share Albert's bed for the one night he is required to stay to complete the work, much to Albert's horror. Hubert discovers the reason Albert did not want to share a room with him. But rather than the issue being a problem, Hubert shows Albert that he can follow a slightly different life path than the one he envisioned for himself - one closer to the life that Hubert leads with his wife Cathleen - which includes getting married and having a wife to support him emotionally. ...

Plot Keywords: butler, transvestite, painter, maid, partner, love interest, emotional ...

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#14. The Dead Girl (2006)

Storyline: In Los Angeles, a story about a dead girl, told in five chapters. A woman, miserable in her circumscribed life caring for her domineering mother, finds a body. Somehow, this discovery allows her to change. At the morgue, the sister of a girl missing for 15 years believes the body is that of her sister; this liberates her. An older woman, married to a man who pays her little attention, finds evidence in a storage unit; how will she handle it? The mother of the dead girl, who left home some years before, visits the last place her daughter lived and makes her own discoveries. Last, we flash back to the victim's final day.

Plot Keywords: runaway, mother, sister, suspect, victim, dark, eerie ...

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#15. Just One of the Guys (1985)

Storyline: Terry Griffith has got it all -- looks, popularity, the perfect college boyfriend, and an article that's a shoo-in to win her a summer internship at the local newspaper... or so she thinks. When Terry's journalism teacher passes her article up in favor of a couple of pieces written by boys, Terry is convinced that sexism is to blame. Determined to win the internship at any cost, Terry goes undercover at a rival high school to resubmit her article... as a boy. But Terry gets more than she bargained for when she finds herself fending off a bully and the advances of an oversexed female admirer, and falling for her new pal Rick.

Plot Keywords: high-school student, college student, reporter, brother, girl, love interest, amusing ...

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