Beyond the Binary: What Does Trans Allyship Look Like?

Reclaim The Frame, the BFI Inclusion team and Women & Hollywood today publish the learning from three years of international conversations exploring trans allyship across the film industry.

Today we publish Beyond the Binary: What Does Trans Allyship Look Like?, a new learning paper bringing together findings from three years of conversations exploring how the film industry can better support and champion trans, non-binary and gender-expansive filmmakers, professionals and audiences.

Beyond the Binary began with Reclaim The Frame and Women & Hollywood questioning the role and responsibility of feminist film organisations historically established to champion women filmmakers in an increasingly less binary world. It grew, together with the BFI Inclusion team, into a wider international conversation across the film sector, bringing together filmmakers, funders, festivals, exhibitors, awards bodies and trans-led organisations.

Since 2023, the programme has facilitated industry conversations alongside Berlinale and at the Marché du Film in Cannes, alongside further sector engagement with Le Collectif 50/50, the Independent Cinema Office and others.

The paper arrives at a time of significant underrepresentation. Reclaim The Frame’s monitoring found that just 0.6% of UK and Ireland theatrical releases in 2024/25 were written and/or directed by trans or non-binary filmmakers. ReFrame’s ReFrame Report on Gender & Hiring in Film 2025 found no transgender or non-binary directors or lead performers among the 100 most popular films of 2025, while GLAAD’s 2026 Where We Are in Film found no transgender characters across 225 films released by ten major distributors in 2025.

[Read the full report here]

Four key learnings

Across three years of conversations, four interconnected areas of learning emerged:

Moving beyond the “language barrier” - Fear of getting language wrong can become a barrier to engaging at all. Language matters, but meaningful inclusion also depends on behaviour, relationships, systems and accountability.

Moving from scarcity to abundance - Participants challenged the idea that women’s rights and trans inclusion are competing concerns, exploring instead how expanding inclusion can expand audiences, partnerships and possibilities.

Rethinking the binary - Welcoming language alone is not enough without examining the structures, decisions and assumptions that continue to shape who participates and belongs.

Holding difficult conversations - Conversations were consistently less contentious than anticipated. Clear boundaries, thoughtful facilitation and a willingness to listen, question, learn and be corrected created space for meaningful dialogue.

Allyship in practice

The paper explores how three organisations have put these principles into practice:

British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) reflects on its 2022 move from binary acting categories to gender-neutral performance awards, and how extensive consultation informed and strengthened the decision.

Chicken & Egg Films shares the year-long process behind expanding its eligibility to gender-expansive filmmakers, including the challenges of finding language that works across different cultures and contexts.

Reclaim The Frame reflects on our own evolution from Birds’ Eye View and our 2023 expansion to champion filmmakers of all marginalised genders, including preparing extensively for a backlash that ultimately did not materialise.

Reflections from the convening partners

Melanie Iredale, Director of Reclaim The Frame, said:

“Beyond the Binary began with feminist film organisations questioning our own role and responsibility: if we exist to challenge marginalisation on the grounds of gender, who are we still leaving outside the frame? What has been most encouraging over three years of conversations is the appetite to engage, learn and unlearn. This paper brings that learning together so it can travel further across our sector.”

Melissa Silverstein, Founder of Women & Hollywood, said:

“When Women & Hollywood began almost 20 years ago, there was no conversation in Hollywood and the global film industry about the lack of opportunities for women both onscreen and behind the scenes. The success of that work has led to a backlash, and the industry consolidation is used as an excuse to marginalize gender expansive storytellers. The belief of Women & Hollywood is that inclusion is vital to storytelling and that empowering trans and non-binary filmmakers makes the industry stronger and more successful.”

Melanie Hoyes, Senior Director of Inclusion, BFI, added:

“We worked incredibly hard to make Beyond the Binary truly accessible and inclusive in order that we could really explore what it means to be trans inclusive organisations. It is great to see the conversations and learnings from those sessions be reflected in this paper, to be disseminated more widely than the few people who could attend those sessions in person. It is so important to continue to understand how we can show up as allies and continue to make spaces that are warm and welcoming for all.”

Beyond the Binary: What Does Trans Allyship Look Like? brings together the learning, lived experience and organisational practice shared across the programme, alongside case studies and practical resources for the wider film sector, grounded in a principle that has run throughout the work:

When the most marginalised are included, everyone benefits.

[Download the Report Here]

Reclaim The Frame Director Melanie Iredale will also be speaking about the paper at BFI FAN CON on Tuesday 8 September.