By Hans Pedersen, January 2016 Issue.
You’ve seen Julianne Moore and Ellen Page in the tearjerker Freeheld. You cackled at Lily Tomlin’s awesome performance in Grandma. And hopefully you were wowed by the irascible, wisecracking trans stars in Sean Baker’s Tangerine.
These were just a few of the powerful dramas and comedies featuring LGBTQ themes Echo covered this past year.
A groundbreaking, award-winning movie can bypass local theaters in markets like Phoenix, only to fall off the radar while awaiting release months, or even sometimes a year, after first turning heads.
Some received a proper red carpet arrival when they premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, but there are others we wanted to shed light on by giving them their due with a little fanfare.
Before the 2015 credits roll, here are five titles that recently popped up on Netflix or other platforms that you may have missed earlier this year.
52 Tuesdays
It’s an impressive idea: shoot a movie only on Tuesdays for an entire year, with events in the film also unfolding in a string of 52 Tuesdays.
The premise sizzles with creative possibilities. Actor Del Herbert-Jane, who in real life was undergoing a transition from female to male during the shoot, plays the role of a parent who is making a similar transition.
Incorporating an actor’s gender transformation into the story over the course of the year gives the movie an entirely new dimension.
The daughter’s reaction to the gender reassignment, and her own sexual adventures with another boy and girl at school, become part of this fascinating story, which evolved as the creative team shot the film over one year.
Director Sophie Hyde pulled off this feat using $350,000 in seed money from an Australian initiative that is designed to create films without market attachments. Her efforts paid off with a slew of accolades, including the Directing Award at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival in the World Cinema Dramatic category.
The result is an intriguing portrait of a girl who’s making the change from adolescence to adulthood, as her mother becomes her father. 52 Tuesdays is available on Netflix and for purchase on iTunes on Amazon.