Across both the United States and the United Kingdom, the mental health crisis affecting transgender young people has become increasingly difficult to ignore. Studies consistently show that trans youth experience significantly higher rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts than their cisgender peers. In the U.S., research from organisations such as The Trevor Project has found that nearly half of LGBTQ+ young people have seriously considered suicide, with transgender youth among the most at risk. In the UK, similar patterns emerge, with reports highlighting disproportionately high levels of self-harm and suicide attempts among trans individuals, particularly young people trying to understand their identity within often unsupportive environments.

What is crucial to understand, however, is that these outcomes are not caused by being transgender. Rather, they are the result of the conditions many young people are forced to live in. Family rejection, bullying, social isolation, and limited access to affirming healthcare all contribute to a reality in which many feel unsafe or unseen, even within their own homes.

Documentaries that engage with these realities play a vital role. They do more than present statistics; they paint the real picture, offering a space where voices that are often marginalised can be heard. In doing so, they remind us that behind every number is a person, someone trying to make sense of themselves in a world that does not always make space for them.

While watching What Will I Become?, I found myself needing to pause at times. The film is deeply affecting, not only in its subject matter but in its emotional impact. The documentary made me confront difficult questions about empathy, responsibility, and the systems that continue to fail vulnerable young people.

The directors Lexie Bean and Logan Rozos explore the vulnerability within the transmasculine community through personal reflection and the memory of others. Drawing from their own experiences as trans suicide survivors, they weave together the lives of two young trans men, Blake Brockington and Kyler Prescott. Brockington, who made headlines as one of the first openly transgender high school homecoming kings in the United States, became a visible and outspoken advocate for LGBTQ+ youth. His story carried hope and pressure, as public recognition did not shield him from the struggles many trans young people face. Prescott, by contrast, is remembered through a more intimate lens, as a thoughtful and creative young person whose presence resonated within his community. Both were poets, artists, and individuals searching for belonging. Their lives, though different in visibility, reflect the same painful reality: that even those who inspire others can be quietly battling overwhelming challenges.

The film traces their journeys, their creativity, their struggles, and the way their deaths reverberated through their communities. But it also looks beyond individual stories, asking broader and more urgent questions: why does the transmasculine community remain particularly vulnerable, and what are the consequences of a society that continues to misunderstand or marginalise them?

Bean and Rozos approach these questions with great honesty. They reflect on their own fears of identity and survival, revealing how personal these struggles can be. The film also becomes a story about the limitations placed on gender, the impact of trauma, and the urgent need for better support systems. What Will I Become? is about the possibility of change. It challenges the stigma surrounding suicide and trans identity, while asking what it might mean to create a world where young people are given the space to imagine a future for themselves.

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Written by Maggie Gogler

Image courtesy of BFI FLARE

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