{"id":199199,"date":"2026-09-07T15:57:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T15:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/199199\/"},"modified":"2026-09-07T15:57:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T15:57:09","slug":"shes-nonbinary-cuts-deep-at-the-vancouver-queer-film-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/199199\/","title":{"rendered":"She’s Nonbinary cuts deep at the Vancouver Queer Film Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

Get the best of Vancouver in your inbox, every Tuesday and Thursday.\u00a0Sign up for our free newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When Jess McLeod was sitting down to write She\u2019s Nonbinary, a short film that revolves around a conversation between Max (McLeod) and their boyfriend, Jake (Alexander Steele Zonjic), they did so in something of a rage.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a personal story based on a breakup, and I wrote the first draft of the script a month after it happened, so I had little to no perspective about the whole thing,\u201d McLeod says over a video call with the Straight.<\/p>\n

The film is about Max\u2019s decision to get top surgery and the way in which Jake reacts to said decision, which might charitably be described as \u201cmixed\u201d. McLeod gained some perspective sitting in the editing bay.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt like I had to make it before I got top surgery, because that\u2019s what the movie\u2019s about, so I had three months and made it really fast,\u201d they say. \u201cI was editing it as I was recovering from surgery, and it made me face a lot of character defects that I wasn\u2019t aware of. I don\u2019t think that initially I was trying to make it a hit piece about my ex-boyfriend, but I wasn\u2019t really aware of the way that I contributed to that dynamic until I was forced to sit and watch myself do it eight million times.\u201d<\/p>\n

While She\u2019s Nonbinary was obviously based on real events, McLeod admits that some things were, of course, dramatized for the screen.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was so mad, and I was, you know, deciding for him maybe what my transition meant about how he should move in the world, and I\u2019ve since realized that that\u2019s also a very binary way of behaving,\u201d they say. \u201cI think part of the short is definitely me making fun of myself a little bit, which I didn\u2019t really realize that part of it when I was writing and performing it. I was like, \u2018I\u2019m a hero to trans people!\u2019 And then I watched it and went, \u2018Oh, no, no, no.\u2019\u200a\u201d<\/p>\n

The film was shot at Zonjic\u2019s apartment by McLeod, who was raised in Victoria and is currently based in Vancouver. But they\u2019re also quickly becoming a recognizable face in Hollywood shows and movies, like the Bob Odenkirk vehicle Normal and the new Jane Schoenbrun\u2013directed horror romp Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.<\/p>\n

On the small screen, they were recently upgraded to a series regular for the second season of Silicon Valley dramedy The Audacity, starring Billy Magnussen and Zach Galifianakis. McLeod plays Harper, the pink-haired chief technology officer of data-mining startup Hypergnosis, and spends most of their on-screen time with the aforementioned stars. They\u2019ve soaked up a few lessons from the two men.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith Billy, I think he is so good at\u2014this is going to sound like I\u2019m being mean, and I\u2019m really not, I\u2019ve said this to his face\u2014making huge mistakes and then learning from them and finding something that he never would have gotten to had he not come in and made the craziest, biggest choice of all time,\u201d they say. \u201cAnd Zach is so anti-Hollywood in a way that I really love and respect. He\u2019s so good at not taking anything too seriously. That\u2019s a quality that I want to hold on to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even as they are starting to break through in bigger roles, McLeod is still most focused on their own work. She\u2019s Nonbinary is making its way through the fall festival circuit and will be playing the Vancouver Queer Festival<\/a> after having its global debut a couple of months ago at the Tribeca Film Festival. The film was executive produced by both Odenkirk and Schoenbrun.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had gotten some good advice to bring on some bigger names if we could, and when I worked with Bob, he was so lovely and generous to me,\u201d McLeod says. \u201cHe watched the movie, and I think he was surprised that he liked it a lot. So I asked if he\u2019d help, and he did, and it was similar with Jane.\u201d<\/p>\n

McLeod feels that the film showed well at Tribeca.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was very positive\u2014we were in a really good block with some other shorts about different kinds of relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019s Nonbinary\u2019s content can make the viewer a bit squeamish, which is mostly by design.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has a very strong message for being 10 minutes long, and I can see why it might make people uncomfortable. It kind of makes me uncomfortable,\u201d they say with a laugh.<\/p>\n

There are plans to extend that 10 minutes. McLeod is currently working on making She\u2019s Nonbinary into a feature film that\u2019s currently without a title. They do have a script, though.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like the feature will capture how I want to be moving in the world and kind of my journey toward being less binary about stuff,\u201d McLeod says, noting that they brought the script to the Tribeca Creators Market recently and were set to take it to Gotham Week, the U.S.\u2019s largest curated marketplace for independent film and television creators, at the end of September. Schoenbrun has agreed to be an EP again.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt may,\u201d they add, \u201cbe larger than people would expect the journey to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019s Nonbinary\u00a0shows at the Vancouver Queer Film Festival<\/a>, which runs from September 10-20 at venues across the city.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Get the best of Vancouver in your inbox, every Tuesday and Thursday.\u00a0Sign up for our free newsletter. When…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199200,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[415,17,412,413,418,407,414,420,416,423,226,389,419,422,421,417,95],"class_list":["post-199199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver","tag-arts","tag-canada","tag-city","tag-culture","tag-dining","tag-entertainment","tag-events","tag-fashion","tag-film","tag-food","tag-lifestyle","tag-music","tag-nightlife","tag-restaurants","tag-shopping","tag-tv","tag-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}