The modern paradox of culture is that art is more accessible than ever while also feeling a bit too homogenized. This is a broad overview, but it does feel like the work that general audiences often digest all comes in conveniently packaged boxes, where YouTube videos link you to their Patreon or Kofi while every podcast of note breaks up their free-flowing conversation with ads for products that (let’s be honest) nobody will ever buy. A lot of it is desirable for the independent artist trying to pay their rent, but at the same time, it makes one wonder where the art that challenges transgressive and societal norms has gone. It should be more accessible than ever, and yet it’s harder to find success stories for outsider art.
Over the past few years, one thing has come to embody that elusive title. Somewhere amid the Letterboxd rumor mill was a film that was all but little, at times more discussed for its audacity than anything it actually had to say. Maybe it’s because I followed a few artists involved with it, but all of a sudden, I heard of this movie that pushed boundaries, feeling groundbreaking in a period where it’s difficult to find truly original storytelling. It was a movie whose title provoked an immediate reaction, demanding that you either engage with its vulgarity or just walk away and admit that something named after genital mutilation from the director of a montage movie of “dick destruction” is just not for you.
Reading the cast list of the ongoing Castration Movie series is to notice transgender creators that I think are revolutionizing modern discourse. Key among them is Vera Drew, whose The People’s Joker (2024) remains one of the more surreal movies I’ve seen for how it blends autobiography with [adult swim] level anarchism. There’s also Ethel Cain’s friend Salem Anhedonia, whose music is featured. Finally, the third film is said to feature Jane Schoenbrun, who has directed one of my all-time favorites, I Saw the TV Glow (2024), and best embodies media centered around the trans identity breaking through to the masses.
But what makes Castration Movie, Part 1 (2024) unique is that it feels like the most uncompromising film I’ve seen on any subject in at least the past decade, probably longer. To move beyond its themes is to notice how unmarketable director Louise Weard’s vision is. It’s not just that the camerawork feels reminiscent of early Lars Von Trier, where nothing is conveniently in frame. There’s a candidness that borders on self-indulgence as scenes play out for way too long, digging into conversations that feel real but never move the plot forward. Beyond its function, the execution meanders to a daunting 4.5-hour runtime that would be too much for most to sit through in an age of limited attention spans. In fact, Castration Movie, Part 1 currently stands as the second-longest movie I’ve sat through in one go since Von Trier’s more organized director’s cut of Nymphomaniac (2014). Though if you want a punchline for the ages… Castration Movie, Part 2 (2025) is actually FIVE HOURS. Did I remind you that there’s also: A.) A third movie in the works, and; B.) There’s probably going to be even more?
Before moving past the architecture of this epic that stands to be triple the length of Satantango (1994), I want to get the criticisms out of the way. Mileage may vary on how endearing these lo-fi conversations will feel after clocking in on the second hour. There is an interminable length that Weard has described as “misery porn,” and it’s hard to ignore how much this is a shoestring budget that sometimes feels irksome to look at, especially as certain characters participate in repetitive behaviors that are intentionally done to make them unlikable. Weard’s insistence on making dimensional trans women is fused so much with the text that she gained 20 pounds solely because she hadn’t seen a fat trans sex worker on film before. This feels like it’s shoving everything into one movie as if this is the last word on the subject that will ever exist. I would joke that she’s making films reminiscent of Lena Dunham, but then I watched an interview with htmljones where she said it herself. Finally, what I am about to say makes me hopeful of the director’s larger vision, but I’m also worried that her pursuit of realism and hangout vibes will prove an endurance test that will wear my enthusiasm down before I see the final closing credits sometime over a dozen hours from now.
To put it simply, I love the indie spirit. It’s one of the things I look for most in filmmaking, and I find that those who stray from conventions often find something richer in character construction. I love existing in a moment that takes the mundane and creates richly textured memories that will stick with the viewer. I love this feeling of working around constraints and finding a richer form of expression. Castration Movie, at its heart, believes that ideology to its own demerits. A lot of exchanges, especially in the second section, are at best glimpses into perspectives that have had to fit into background roles that have their own often-ignored language.
As Weard would suggest in interviews, this is a film that may be inaccessible to the conventional cisgender viewer. For those who haven’t spent a lot of time exploring LGBTQIA+ subcultures, this film is a baffling mix of ideas, forgoing the typical sympathetic victim arc in favor of figures that are flawed and sometimes volatile. What should be obvious isn’t always done to fulfill some petty ego, reflecting the desperation of a society ravaged by mental illness and financial insecurity. Given that this opens with a pull quote by Norm MacDonald about how every character should die, there’s this ironic winking going on about how lonely and desperate the story to follow is. While there’s no physical act of castration in Castration Movie Part 1, it still has that visceral pull from one’s being, as if removing a tumor to fulfill an unknown cure.
Weard has designed this story as an anthology. This film centers around two separate stories that may seem irrelevant from afar, but slowly begin to connect the longer the viewer gets stuck in the meditative long shots. What makes this truly earn the definition of “groundbreaking” in my opinion is how it captures conversations that I’ve only heard about, reflecting without judgment characters who are at times unpleasant but speak to the modern zeitgeist. Section 1 centers around a cisgender man who becomes addicted to reading incel message boards while spouting transphobic language. As Weard puts it, he’s a man who manages not to have sex despite having a girlfriend, which is its own ironic punchline. Even still, the director allows his spiraling to earn its bleakness, where he becomes a man groveling at the feet of his ex before accepting that he has his own isolating future on a message board, believing increasingly irrational rhetoric about how a body should look in order to be desirable.
Even if Section 2 is less centered around internet addiction, it’s there in the background as protagonist Traps (Weard) goes about doing sex work and contemplating becoming a mother. She has her own conflicting relationship with a man as she deals with a variety of conflicts. The camera lingers on a discussion of HRT, where she lets the camera linger on injection shots alongside real-life scenes of characters discussing breast-reduction surgery (there’s even a scene of the post-op). There’s the complicated relationship between a woman who had transitioned years prior with someone new to the game, doing what they can to find identity. The arguments can be hostile and Traps terribly annoying, but they all build this sense of community that realizes that they’re all they have. They need that net to survive in a world that sees them closer to sex objects than fully fleshed humans.
Weard’s best quality is her ability to dig into the moment and let everything unfold. At times, this feels closer to a Chantal Akerman movie, where the viewer is encouraged to lean in and find smaller details that emerge as signs of gradual change. This is a hangout movie that feels like the sigh of relief for trans women when the world is pulled away. There’s talk about sex work and, in a memorable cameo, Vera Drew discusses why she hasn’t read “Dune” yet before joking that she’ll watch the David Lynch version. These are women who fit the bizarre world of today, feeling terminally online and defined by endless conversations of film study alongside their personal lives. If there’s any hope for Castration Movie, it’s that this is an ambitious, ever-expansive world that is more interested in the fringes than the center story. You could hypothetically whittle this down to something more marketable, but that would ignore Weard’s goal of, as she’d put it, making up for lost time. This is her vision of what it means to be trans in the 21st century. It has its problems, but there’s so much joy worth finding.
Castration Movie Part 1 does a great job of exploring both the anthropological side of the community, as well as the psychology of figures who are often portrayed as model citizens on a good day in film. Weard’s willingness to explore the internalized transphobia and self-hate allows the animosity to feel rational, at times tragic, as she attempts to find a reason for these characters to feel loved. There is no convenience here. The ending may be overlong, but it lays home the idea that nobody is perfect, that mistakes will happen. For as much as movies are taught to believe that happy endings are possible, it doesn’t come this early in the anthology. Not after 4.5 hours, anyway.
Given that the next entry features a poster where a woman is holding a gun to her head, it’s not likely to be found there either. Even so, this piece of outsider art does a great job of humanizing the modern trans woman beyond the tapestries of cinematic language. If anything, it creates its own and does so with radical indulgence. For as much as I was checking my watch, there’s no denying the power of being immersed in an epic, realizing that your commitment is its own reward. You find deeper character moments that couldn’t be more pleasantly placed. It’s where you form a deep attachment to these figures and want to see them overcome struggles. As suggested, I’m not without criticism for Weard, but I do plan to see the next entry when funds provide. For now, this is a reminder that more ambitious storytelling that doesn’t conform to your liking is still out there. No matter what I’d change, this is Louise Weard’s story. This is how she wanted to tell it, and that’s exactly how it should be.
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