Private Project

Hormonal

Young trans guy Gary catches eyes with brooding trans geezer Ian across the square of their Essex hometown, and unwittingly walks in to a testosterone heist plot...
Transgender criminal underclass small town bois take on roided Essex gym bro gangsters in this neo-noir crime caper flight of fancy

  • Maz Murray
    Director
    Poppets
  • Charlie Hurst
    Producer
  • Yasser Zadeh
    Key Cast
    "Ian"
  • Scroobius Pip
    Key Cast
    "Gary 2"
  • LJ Bennion
    Key Cast
    "Gary"
  • Nkara Stephenson
    Key Cast
    "Darren"
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short
  • Genres:
    Crime, LGBT
  • Runtime:
    12 minutes 22 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    March 15, 2023
  • Production Budget:
    12,000 GBP
  • Country of Origin:
    United Kingdom
  • Country of Filming:
    United Kingdom
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Maz Murray

Maz Murray (Basildon, 1995) is an artist working across film, writing and performance. They studied at Chelsea College of Arts and have shown work at ICA, South London Gallery, Uppsalla Short Film Festival and London Short Film Festival, among others. They have made films for Channel 4 Random Acts and BFI. Their first institutional solo show with Focal Point Gallery opens in March 2024.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

I'm a working class trans masculine filmmaker interested in depicting trans people across genres, and with humour that we get to shape - rather than being the butt of the joke.

Hormonal is a film partially based on my experience buying testosterone from bodybuilding websites due to the long wait times for NHS trans healthcare. It was made with a majority trans cast and crew. It was important to me to get trans people working behind the scenes, as much as it was to represent a diversity of trans people in the story.

The world of Hormonal is specific - working class transgender people accessing testosterone in one small town in Essex - but I believe it’s this commitment to specificity which gives it strength - it’s inviting the viewer in to a truth rather than being didactic. I wanted to continue using DIY guerrilla filmmaking and experimenting with form, rather than bowing to the social realism often presumed a default for such 'issues' based film.