08/04/2025 - Kani Lapuerta invites us to join them in their highly respectful and affectionate close-up observation of a trans adolescent’s everyday life as she tries to impose her own rules

Presented in a world premiere in the Visions du Réel Festival’s International Feature Films Competition, Niñxs by documentary-maker, social educator and trans-feminist activist Kani Lapuerta offers a cathartic journey through eight years in the life of Karla, a trans girl who has chosen to fight against the ignorance and violence of a society which doesn’t understand and therefore refuses difference, a society based on privileges which only white, cis, heterosexual, healthy bodies can aspire to. Through Niñxs, Kani Lapuerta imposes Karla’s story, her truth, giving her the dignity and respect she deserves. With courage, empathy and a healthy dose of humour, the director embraces her protagonist, cinematographically speaking, offering her the role of a lifetime.

At the foot of Tepozteco - a sacred hill honouring the winds and fertility - nestles the small city of Tepoztlán. Karla is growing up in this strikingly mystical place immersed in nature and cut off from the world. She’s a fifteen-year-old who’s undergoing revolutionary transformation. The protagonist of Niñxs is going through the various phases of transition, a process both destabilising and emancipatory which will give her the freedom she’s always dreamed of but which she doesn’t actually believe she’ll ever obtain. Kani follows her closely for eight years, helping her to produce a picture-based diary in which she’s the sole protagonist, an (anti) diva who rebels against any form of discrimination. Niñxs sees Karla and the director signing a symbolic, cinematographic but also militant and political contract. Through Kani’s incisive and poetic approach, filmmaking becomes an act of rebellion against a patriarchal society which only thinks in binary terms.

Niñxs is a highly enjoyable and brilliant collective film which paints a courageous and affectionate portrait of a trans adolescence spent in a rural environment. Because despite dreaming with friends about a future paved with sequins, activism and freedom, Karla is growing up in a deeply conservative society, a village chosen by countless hippies as a refuge and oasis in which to live an alternative life. Despite the limitations inherent to all villages, Karla has created her own community composed of young people just like her, who question and deconstruct gender stereotypes. A kind of LGBTIQ+ militia which favours razor-sharp, rainbow-hued demands over weapons, Karla and her queens present themselves to the world in all their brilliant and emancipatory diversity. The protagonist is supported on her vital path by her anti-conformist parents, a pair of former punks (as she herself describes them) who shower her with love and acceptance. The scene where Karla and her mother are filmed sitting on two swings, talking about what it really means to be a “woman”, is both moving and powerful. With great reason and affection, the mother talks with her daughter in a gesture of solidarity, both of them diverse “women” who debunk and break down stereotypes associated with a dangerously essentialist view of femininity. Karla asserts her identity as a trans woman with strength, fighting against a gender binarism which excludes her because she doesn’t conform, because she’s different and because she’s too revolutionary for the society in which she lives.

Over time, Karla’s body becomes political, turning into a manifesto for a kind of dissidence carried out with dazzling pride. Her transformation isn’t just physical, it’s primarily an act of rebellion against gender binarism, against heterosexuality as the only model for desire, which always has to be labelled and channelled. The protagonist of Niñxs finds the support she was missing in the LGBTIQ+ community, an alliance of dissident bodies who are fighting for a freedom which they’ve been denied for far too long.

Kani’s film paints a different portrait of trans identity, which is no longer marked exclusively by violence (even though it’s sadly undeniable) and rejection, but also by joy and acceptance within communities which want to live according to their own rules.

Niñxs was produced by La Sandía Digital Produccion Audiovisual S.A de C.V (Mexico), in co-production with MartFilms (Mexico) and Sparrows on Rooftops (Germany).

(Translated from Italian)