A Deep Dive Into Louise Weard's World: Austin Premieres of Castration Movie Anthology i and ii

In September, Austin-based cinefreaks had the opportunity to catch back-to-back big-screen premieres of Canadian filmmaker Louise Weard’s Castration Movie project. These local screenings were the result of a distribution boost by AFS Cinema programmer Liz Purchell.

A trans woman, Weard got her start in DIY cinema crowdfunding her body-horror short Computer Hearts at the age of 19. She’s spent much of her career in the film and TV industry trenches, and a Letterboxd list led to a gig creating the legendary 100 Best Kills: Texas Birth Control, Dick Destruction compilation for Fantastic Fest 2022. 

Shot on-location with a hand-me-down camcorder, Castration Movie follows a series of trans characters and one incel dude navigating the highs and (mostly) lows of modern working-class-outsider life. Castration Movie Anthology i and Anthology ii dropped online in 2023 and earlier this year, respectively. Each runs about five hours, with Anthology iii due next year. 

In a pre-film chat outside AFS, Weard described the Castration Movie project as “durational cinema,” as opposed to the “slow cinema” tag often given to long films like Jeanne Dielman or the works of Béla Tarr. Indeed, the films are anything but slow, full of memorable incidents and characters as well as dark humor, a chaotic tapestry of Altmanesque social canvases soaked in 4chan nihilism.

To make a painfully obvious point, an individual’s experience attempting to build a life and community on this planet should never be politicized. These films depict characters who often feel backed into a corner by mainstream society’s reaction to their gender identity. But they’re also individuals with unique motivations, hang-ups, and flaws.

“To suck is to be human,” as Weard puts it in her director’s statement, and her depiction of translife in all its bare-assed, 4am trailer park glory transcends the sad oppression saga the premise of the films may imply. Sly and entertaining, they’re also raunchy as hell, featuring full frontal nudity, pee play, and literal buckets of cum. If “John Waters does Dogme 95” is the vibe you seek, put on some coffee and tap in.

Castration Movie Anthology i.

The Fear of Having No One to Hold at the End of the World

“Now this might strike some viewers as harsh, but I think everyone involved in this story should die.”

This legendary Norm MacDonald quote serves as the epigraph for Anthology i. It is a bit harsh, actually. While spiced with truly loathsome behavior, this 276-minute opening salvo is surprisingly humanistic and full of characters who, while imperfect, are relatable on some level.

Set in Weard’s hometown of Vancouver, Anthology i is structured as a diptych, comprising two feature-length chapters with scenes and lines of dialogue that mirror each other. Refracted through two very different characters, the full picture asks what it means to bring value to another person's life.

“Chapter One: Incel Superman” follows the metaphorical castration of an unsympathetic loser named Turner as his life unravels. Acidly rendered by Noah Baker, Turner is a confrontational human apology straight out of TFW No GF. While small details imply that some of his turmoil is based in dysphoria, this chapter mostly delivers brutal cringe comedy as Turner responds to every criticism and disappointment with an emotional blowtorch.

“Chapter Two: Traps Swan Princess” provides welcome relief, pivoting to the lively antics of trans sex worker Michaela “Traps” Sinclair. Played by Weard herself in a commanding performance, Traps juggles tricking, bootlegging HRT (from a hilarious plug played by Vera “The People’s Joker” Drew), and navigating a situationship with normie tech bro Christian. 

In the post-screening Q&A, Weard described the filmmaking process as intentionally laid-back: one take per scene (with lots of preparation) and short shooting days. Seeking a "weightlessness of form," she would regularly hand the Hi8 camcorder to crew members with the least shooting experience, telling them to chase their pleasure. 

To be clear, Hi8 is not a cool vintage 8mm film format; this is dad’s-vacation-video quality. Weard admitted as much in her introduction: "This is the biggest screen this movie has ever played on… it's gonna look like shit!" But that “weightless” visual inventiveness actually popped off the AFS screen. Afterward, I overheard someone remark the 4.5 hour runtime flew by. It really is just about the snappiest epic-length experimental movie you're likely to see in 2025.

Castration Movie Anthology ii.  

The Best of Both Worlds 

My war 

You're one of them 

You say that you're my friend 

But you're one of them 

-Black Flag 

This song is not in the movie, but it’s what my brain dredged up while reflecting on its themes. 

Anthology ii is a much colder, darker, more grueling watch than Anthology i, fueled by paranoia, shame, defiance, and psychological and physical violence. Universal punk rock stuff.

Set in New York City, Anthology ii introduces protagonist Circle naked and alone in a bathroom, snorting drugs off the sink. Played by Alexandria Walton in a mesmerizingly vulnerable performance, Circle has recently joined a trans separatist cult who self-isolate in a basement, surviving on hot dogs, yoga, orgies and ketamine. She’s already having trouble fitting in.

The plot explores Circle’s conflicting needs as an assertive individual seeking happiness, and as a member of a community that prioritizes safety for socio-political reasons. She eventually escapes into the after-hours NYC streets, liberating herself and the audience after what feels like an eternity trapped in the oppressive basement dronemind. 

This leads to a party scene that is one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a movie theater this year. In an unbroken split-screen take, Circle endures her personal hell in a corner of a random apartment while hipsters laugh and do drugs in the kitchen. Eventually the two sides link up as cis girl Keller (Ivy Wolk) chats Circle up, enlivening both her and the movie out of its stupor. The blocking and staging of this meet-up are exceptional, and even the washed-out audio feels appropriate, planting the viewer in the raucous moment.

Along with occasionally cancelled comedian Wolk, Anthology ii features sibling filmmakers Betsey Brown and Peter Vack, notorious for their trans satire film Actors (Weard is herself a reserved fan). These casting choices, while potentially alienating to some audiences, seem less like trolling on Weard’s part than an earnest desire to forge a transgressive cinema big tent.

True to its title, The Best of Both Worlds explores the spiritual friction of being part of a group, relationship, anything outside oneself. Just to exist and be a person is complicated enough. Why try to become someone else–someone better, more attractive, happier? Why endure the stifling compromises of community and relationships? Either way, life says: good luck with that!

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Both installments of Castration Movie offer a specific experience that transcends any mainstream concept of "good” or “bad." The endurance test of its nearly ten-hour runtime, combined with its direct confrontation of cis liberal piety, adds up to that rare thing: authentic, zero-fucks-given, underground DIY cinema. 

Weard’s most radical move is her unprecious approach to trans identity. These characters’ problems aren’t the hardest or easiest to figure out. They’re just theirs, and they are approached with a realistic mix of stubbornness and self-doubt. Both films feature scenes of straight white men struggling to engage with a characters’ trans-ness, their walking on eggshells played mostly for laughs.

Of course, the reason for the eggshells in the first place is the real danger trans people face in society. During the post-Anthology ii Q&A, distributor Liz Purchell noted sadly that there weren’t as many trans people in the audience as she expected. Have they all moved out of Texas already? I personally know of many who have, including close friends, and I miss them all the time. (That said, people showed up for these movies and I noted zero walk outs, even during the Anthology ii screening Q&A, which began at 2:30am.)

Weard makes capital-P politics an explicit theme in the opening credits for Anthology ii, which unfold over footage of Donald Trump muttering about “gender ideology,” his image saturated to a nauseating gray-orange. This harsh grounding hovers over the film as a kind of front-loaded ambient dread, respectfully leaving the viewer to fill in the gaps. 

It’s human nature to desire clarity and understanding of the world, to overcome uncertainty. Today’s information pathways, mediated almost exclusively through Big Tech, run their immense profit engines off the friction produced by the inevitable frustration of this desire. Tech’s recent alliance with Trump’s Christian Nationalist coalition was perhaps inevitable, as both groups worship the finites of binary thinking, perfect ones and zeros, with anything in-between a disposable “other.”

Castration Movie’s word-of-mouth success shows incredible hustle on Weard’s part. But it also reveals a grassroots audience hungry for art that can poke holes in the silos the ruling class wants to corral us into. We can balance social media’s toxic power against its utility for communicating at scale and building community. Of course, it’s vital to then show up when a film like this (which I discovered on Letterboxd) comes to a theater near you. Real life happens between the ones and zeroes.

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