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Variety is premiering the trailer (below) for feature documentary “Transition,” which follows Australian filmmaker Jordan Bryon, a trans man, as he embeds with a Taliban unit as they retake control of Afghanistan.

The film, directed by Monica Villamizar and Bryon, will be released in the U.S. on March 26 by Gravitas Ventures. The film is available now for pre-order on Apple. AGC International is selling it at the European Film Market this week.

“Transition” is produced by Villamizar and was financed by AGC Unwritten and Our Time Projects. Academy Award-nominated documentary director Matthew Heineman (“Cartel Land”) is executive producing with Stuart Ford, Lourdes Diaz, Joel Zimmer, Bj Levin, Sebastian Hernandez, Juan Manuel Betancourt and Joedan Okun.

The film’s primary subjects are Bryon, Afghan cinematographer Farzad Fetrat (“Teddy”) and Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Kiana Hayeri.

“Transition” had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival to audience and critical acclaim and was...

Exclusive: The Gotham Film and Media Institute and HBO Documentary Films have set the cohort and mentors for the second edition of their Documentary Development Initiative. Launched in 2022, the initiative was designed for storytellers who identify as Bipoc, LGBTQ+, and/or storytellers with disabilities, the goal being to provide resources to develop thought-provoking, character-driven, contemporary ideas for documentary films and limited series.

This year’s participants are Rolake Bamgbose, Dan Chen, Elizabeth Lo, Andy Sarjahani, Krystal Tingle, and Monica Villamizar. Distinguished creatives serving as mentors will include Anthony Caronna, Zackary Drucker, David France, Dawn Porter, Fernando Villena, and Nanfu Wang.

Taking place throughout the fall of 2024, the second annual program will see selected filmmakers receive grants of $50,000 for research and creative development at an early stage. HBO and The Gotham will provide resources and mentorship to support the development of documentary projects and select grantees will have the opportunity to receive additional funding.

Mstyslav Chernov’s unflinching account of the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine wins the public vote at the documentary festival

Mstyslav Chernov’s unflinching account of the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, 20 Days In Mariupol, has won the Npo IDFA Audience Award at International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA).

The €5,000 prize was awarded at the Royal Theater Tuschinski in Amsterdam on Saturday night, (November 18) followed by a special screening of the film. The award is based on votes by festival visitors who rate the films directly following their screenings via a Qr code.

AGC International launching international sales at AFM.

Tinder Swindler studio AGC Unwritten has sold US rights to Monica Villamizar and Jordan Bryon’s feature documentary Transition to Gravitas Ventures.

The film follows Australian filmmaker Bryon, a trans man, as he embeds with a Taliban unit as they retake control of Afghanistan.

The primary subjects of the story are Bryon, Afghan cinematographer Farzad Fetrat (Teddy) and Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Kiana Hayeri.

AGC International will screen Transition and launch international sales at the AFM next week, and Gravitas Ventures plans a March 2024 release.

The documentary received its world premiere at Tribeca Festival and...

“Tinder Swindler” studio AGC Unwritten has sold U.S. rights to Monica Villamizar and Jordan Bryon’s feature documentary “Transition” to Gravitas Ventures.

The film follows Australian filmmaker Jordan Bryon, a trans man, as he embeds with a Taliban unit as they retake control of Afghanistan. AGC International will screen the film and launch international sales at the American Film Market next week. Gravitas will release the film in March 2024.

“Transition” is produced by Villamizar and was financed by AGC Unwritten and Our Time Projects. Academy Award-nominated documentary director Matthew Heineman (“Cartel Land”) is executive producing with Stuart Ford, Lourdes Diaz, Joel Zimmer, Bj Levin, Sebastian Hernandez, Juan Manuel Betancourt and Joedan Okun.

The film’s primary subjects are Bryon, Afghan cinematographer Farzad Fetrat (“Teddy”) and Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Kiana Hayeri.

“Transition” had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival to audience and critical acclaim and was an official selection at Sheffield DocFest,...

By the standards of a war-based documentary, Jordan Bryon and Monica Villamizar’s Transition rarely features violence. Steering clear of carnage, it instead focuses on Bryon hanging out with Taliban soldiers, spending time within their homes, their training sessions, and their strongholds throughout Afghanistan. He’s making a film for the New York Times while going through the process of gender transition, the backdrop of the Taliban’s takeover simmering around him. The resulting documentary teeters on this complicated situation: the understanding that if the Taliban soldiers learn Bryon’s secrets, they’ll likely kill him.

Bryon and Villamizar direct without much fuss, opting to use a majority of the former’s footage as their main source for framing. There aren’t any talking heads or long-winded interviews, no Q&a sessions with Bryon discussing his time in Afghanistan. It’s the life of a war documentarian over the course...

A trans man has to navigate the complexities of gender transition treatment while also chronicling the Afghani Taliban in Monica Villamizar and Jordan Bryon’s intensely personal and political “Transition.” Despite its relatively straightforward title, this documentary, which premiered at Tribeca, is a staggering work that, somehow, manages to contextualize not only Bryon’s personal transition but also juxtapose that life against the deeply segregated Taliban fighters that he is chronicling for The New York Times.

Continue reading ‘Transition’ Review: A Riveting Portrait of Gender Transitioning That Successfully Marries Personal & Political Storytelling [Tribeca] at The Playlist.

It’s no secret that war reporters are often adrenaline junkies with an astronomically high risk tolerance, but Jordan Bryon takes the cake. A documentarian based in Afghanistan, Bryon was embedded with a Taliban unit after the fall of Kabul while working on a film for the New York Times. A chilling prospect for anyone, much less a white Australian “infidel,” as one source calls him.

But there’s one other little detail that puts Bryon at particular risk: He’s trans. During the risky assignment the 39-year-old journalist also filmed himself, capturing his unique situation in “Transition,” an astonishing documentary that merges the geopolitical with the personal.

As Bryon takes steps to medically transition while living in the Middle East, his relationship to gender evolves against the backdrop of a strictly gendered society. The pressure to pass becomes a life or death situation (as it is for many trans...

How people perceive gender and react to it lies at the heart of “Transition,” Monica Villamizar and Jordan Bryon’s documentary premiering in competition at the Tribeca Film Festival. The film follows Bryon, an Australian journalist, transitioning at the same time that he’s reporting from within Afghanistan as the country falls back under Taliban rule in 2021. His dilemma intensifies as he’s ensconced with a group of hardline Taliban fighters. They only know him as a man, so he’s able to have the access and security he needs to perform his job even as others in the country are losing their rights because of their gender. With that framework, the film feels like a documentation of a timebomb situation. At any moment things might change drastically for Bryon.

By the time Kabul falls, Jordan has been living in Afghanistan for more than five years. He’s there documenting...

In the opening moments of Transition, Jordan Bryon, the documentary’s subject and one of its directors, angles his face toward the camera. He moves in close and inspects his chin for hair. There are faint signs of growth, short whiskers that Bryon caresses as he speaks to us.

“My nerves are fucking shot,” he says, alluding to his current circumstances. “There are too many interwoven threads that are becoming very messy.” The precarious situation plaited by these threads is the subject of Bryon’s film, which premiered at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. Co-directed with journalist Monica Villamizar, Transition chronicles Bryon’s gender transition while embedded with a Taliban unit in Afghanistan. The stakes are high for the documentarian, who decided to stay in the country after the insurgents seized the city in August 2021.

Even before the takeover, Afghanistan was no haven for queer people: Same-sex relations were legally banned in 2017, for example.