In 2023 Who I Am was released in Australia on 10 play and Paramount+, and screened at further film festivals including Mardi Gras Film Festival, the Human Rights Arts and Film Festival and Geelong Pride Film Festival.
In June we ran a national tour of 7 sensory-friendly cinema screenings of Who I Am. To deliver the project we partnered with charities and government services working with the Autistic and/or LGBTQIA+ youth including Amaze, Minus18, Royal Children’s Hospital Gender Service, GASP Geelong, Trans and Gender Diverse Bendigo and Beyond, Drop In Care Space, Empower Autism, Open Doors Youth Service and Twenty10. The intention was to reach the autism community who often can’t access cinemas due to the overwhelming sensory environment. With Amaze we created Visual Guides for each of the screening events to ensure the events were as accessible as possible for Autistic people. Captions were added to the film to assist those with audio processing disorder (common for Autistic people) and the cinema experience was adapted to have the sound volume lowered and lights dim rather than completely off.
The screenings were followed by a Q&A with Aether and/or Anthea, reps from local community partners, and young trans and Autistic people from the area. We created a discussion guide for audiences which is available for download on our website.
We received so much positive feedback from the audience about the inclusive space, sensory-friendly aspects, the film, and the Q&As. Many trans and Autistic people and their parents shared how the film was like watching their own story unfold on screen and left them feeling seen and heard. This is the feedback we got from the mum of one of our young panellists: “Thank you so much for including [name removed for privacy] last Thursday. Thank you too for creating such a safe space. Very few people see that side of him. Even though he doesn’t particularly care what people think, he often feels unsafe.”
Through ticket sales we raised a total of $2,521 for the non-profit organisations involved.
In addition, we now have a ‘Host-a-screening’ program and the film is available on FanForce for Cinema-On-Demand and Classroom screenings. So far we have facilitated community screenings hosted by Sunbury Cobaw Community Health and headspace Morwell / Neami National Latrobe. The film was also included in screening packages curated by Queer Screen for the University of Tasmania, Mid-Western Regional Council and headspace Perth.
Who I Am remains available to view for schools in New Zealand and the Pacific on the Doc Edge Schools platform, and in Australia is available for school screenings via our ‘host-a-screening’ program and FanForce Classroom. There are accompanying Study Guides.
We have also secured an international distribution agreement with 7 Palms Entertainment.
