Teaching with Our Males and Females (dir. Ahmad Alyaseer)

Our Males and Females (dir. Ahmad Alyaseer, 2023) is a short film (11 minutes), filmed in Jordan, and packs a complicated, moving, and timely storyline into its economical run time. The simplest film summary could be: A mother and father have received their deceased daughter from an unidentified “abroad,” and aim to wash her for a proper Muslim burial. However, this would miss the balance between causality and choices, surprises, stripped down scenery, and intensity that this story contains. It is quickly revealed that the child is a transgender young woman who has undergone breast augmentation. The father remains committed to affirming his son’s maleness, while the mother at first uses male pronouns in her recitation of the janazah (funerary) prayer, but elegantly and seamless adjusts to identifying her daughter as such by the end of this gripping and emotional presentation.