Diversity Programming At The Austin Film Festival
Coverage from the Austin Film Festival, highlighting some panels and films that emphasized the importance of diverse and inclusive storytelling.

Brothels are rarely seen as safe or dignifying. Yet, in a red light district of Colombia, a country torn by decades of war, there's a tiny brothel named "Tabaco y Ron," which acts as a shelter and shield for trans sex workers that work there. Through a choral portrait of the trans community that inhabits the brothel, this documentary constructs an intimate vignette of this remarkable space. Located in Santafé, Bogotá, the brothel operates in a zone that concentrates all the miseries of a bloodstained region but is also an oasis for all people desperately fleeing war.
Coverage from the Austin Film Festival, highlighting some panels and films that emphasized the importance of diverse and inclusive storytelling.
Lee Daniels’s Billie Holiday biopic The United States vs. Billie Holiday was released on February 26th, 2021, and my immediate reaction to it was one of discomfort.
Falling in love with 'Rocketman" all over again.
The plot could’ve really been interesting if the elements of lycanthropy was integrated with perhaps the struggle of identity of being LGBTQ+. It's an experience for so many that as they’re starting to realizing their true selves, they feel like a monster, especially if they come from unsupportive homes or communities. Instead, the horror and transformation elements seem thrown in without contemplation of how this could deepen the narrative.
‘Oppenheimer’ is a force to be reckoned with. A biopic that respects the audience’s intelligence.
This Transgender Day of Remembrance, let us take a look at six films about transgender children grappling with their identity in a heteronormative world that despises their kind and tries its best to invalidate their feelings.