Private Project

Hormonal

FINAL SOUND MIX IN JUNE
Hormonal is a small town neo-noir with magical-realist flights of fancy. Young trans man Gary spots fellow trans man Ian across the square of his hometown. He’s temporarily waylaid by Bailey, his well meaning colleague, who wants to give unsolicited advice on his recent doctor’s appointment. Gary can see Ian slipping away - so he follows him. He follows him to meet his nonbinary femme partner Darren, to collect money. He follows him to a bodybuilder gym on an industrial estate. He follows him til he’s inevitably caught, and realises he didn’t quite know why he was following at all. Ian sizes Gary up and lets him crash his recce of the gym’s black market testosterone supply in advance of a robbery they’ve planned that same night. Gary can’t keep his cool but Darren and Ian reluctantly welcome him, and his youtube-acquired lock picking skills, into the fold. Are they any match for Gary 2, the cisgender geezer owner of the gym who’s been ripping them off? Is there more to Darren and Ian’s plan than meets the eye? And who’s Del?

  • Maz Murray
    Director
    Poppets
  • 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, Channel 4’s Random Acts and London Short Film Festival, among others.

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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.