Dir. David-Jan Bronsgeest (2024)
A dancer saving for transition surgery struggles with her old life threatening to take control as her new life spirals out of control.
Nisha (Inaya Zarakhel) is a dancer, working with unsavory employers and in unsafe jobs in order to save up for transition surgery. When she turns down a gig where the clients get too handsy, she loses her job and is forced to go on one final job with friend and fellow dancer Eva (Charlie Chan Dagelet). Things don't go well, however, putting Nisha into a situation where her two sides are at war with each other, with neither looking like a particularly good option.
Binary is fascinating. As someone who is not a part of the world in which the film is set, that of the trans community and those looking for acceptance, both from society and themselves, for their identity, it's sometimes difficult to understand how people in that community feel. It's easy to state that you accept someone, and I've considered myself an ally to the LGBT community (as I've discussed previously in my review for Ganymede) for some time now. Binary, though, explained things in a way that made me understand a little bit more. The feeling that something inside you is alien and foreign, especially the things that make your sex different from your gender identity, is a great way to explain their reality to someone who doesn't naturally understand what that must feel like.
It's one of the greatest powers of film. The audience can feel that they understand all they want to, and they may to a certain extent. But showing the audience these feelings is so much more powerful than just telling them. The empathy for these characters often translate into real life: the decrease of racism from the majority of the population can be directly traced back to the increase of black and brown people in our films, and shows like Will and Grace became a cultural touchstone and a huge reason why the LGBT community gained acceptance as quickly as they did (relatively speaking, of course). Placing Zarakhel's character, already an outsider because of her immigration status, into a situation where her gender is equal parts asset and liability, really helps the audience to identify with the character in a way they otherwise might not have been able to.
It is the external factors, however, that carry just as much weight in making Binary what it eventually becomes. The end is extremely distressing and hard to watch, even if justice is eventually received. The finale of the film is anxiety-inducing and terrifying, incredibly well done and one of the most tense pieces of film that I've seen in recent memory. While I won't spoil any of it here, it is an incredibly well done dissection of the internal struggles as it manifests itself in the exterior world. Things can be resolved physically while mental scars remain.
My one critique of the film is also what makes it work as well as it does. It's an incredibly short film, running just about forty minutes long and placing itself firmly into that no-man's-land between short and feature length. Normally, this would drive me fucking crazy, as I have never made it a secret that I feel that films like this should pick a lane and stick to it. Either shave some time off and make it a short film or pad it a little and make it a feature. Director David-Jan Bronsgeest does a phenomenal job of not wasting a single frame in the film, and every minute is necessary to making the film what it is. Any shorter and the audience would be missing something, and any additional minutes would have been unnecessary and taken away from the overall accomplishment of the film. While the runtime may be an issue for placement in festivals and streaming services, it works perfectly for this film.
Binary is the perfect title for a film that concerns itself with the two sides of the same coin. No matter what stage a transgender person is in their transition, it doesn't erase the past that they lived with before they self identified. There will always be a personal history that exists, and there will always be some degree of mental difficulty in reconciling what was with what is. Zarakhel does a tremendous job with her role, a dynamic performance without which the film could have easily fallen flat. It's commendable, and it's what makes the film as good as it is. For that alone, this one is a must watch for fans of socially conscious horror.
Who this movie is for: Short/feature lovers, Social horror fans, Fake cops
Bottom line: Binary is an excellent representation of the internal struggles of trans people. Lead Zarakhel is outstanding and scary, and Bronsgeest knocks this one out of the park. It's shortened run time is perfectly used, and it's perhaps the best representation that I've ever seen of the subject matter. It's a socially conscious film with enough scares to make genre fans happy, and it's definitely one to check out if you can.
