NewFest brings the East Coast premiere of NIÑXS, a coming-of-age story in a town where being Trans can just be

—5 min read—

NIÑXS is one of 40+ films shown at NewFest this year. Photo: courtesy of NIÑXS and Cinema Tropical

“NIÑXS,” screening at NewFest, distances itself from trauma scripts and shows a Mexican trans girl’s bloom in an authentic and accepting environment.

This documentary burns without fire. Filmed over eight years, Niñxs follows Karla, a trans girl growing up in a small town in Mexico, whose adolescence unfolds with the kind of unforced freedom that queer stories rarely get to show.

She isn’t harassed or shunned. She isn’t forced to define or explain her identity. She’s busy learning to make friends, do her makeup, tossing a baton to be part of the town parades and rolling her eyes at her family’s protectiveness. In a world saturated with headlines about anti-trans legislation and fearmongering, Niñxs feels like a window into what acceptance looks like when it doesn’t have to be earned.

In the most honest and playful way, we get to see two teenagers making an intimate documentary. Karla was born a boy, then she grew and became a joyful young girl full of self-expression and imagination. Young Mexican trans director Kani Lapuerta has the sensitivity to enter Karla’s world with a luring artistry.

New Yorkers can see this premiere on October 16th at Nitehawk in Prospect Park as part of NewFest, New York’s annual LGBTQ+ film festival, which, for nearly four decades, has been one of the city’s largest showcases of queer cinema.

“Being trans is like a filter; It helps to strain the unpleasant people,” says a mental health expert on being included in society through a scene of NIÑXS. “The people¨who stay in turn out to be the most valuable kind.” Photo: courtesy of NIÑXS and Cinema Tropical

NewFest: The City’s Queer Cinema Compass
Since 1988, NewFest has functioned as New York’s queer cinematic flagship—first a lifeline for underground filmmakers, now a mirror for the world’s sprawling identities. From Paris Is Burning to Tangerine and Portrait of a Lady on Fire, its screens have mapped the evolution of queer storytelling. This year’s lineup spreads out onto four venues: Manhattan’s SVA Theatre, The LGBT Community Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music and Brooklyn’s Nitehawk Prospect Park. The film selection captures the generational handoff in full swing: filmmakers who no longer ask for permission, but simply capture great plots, beauty, and a silent moment for the audience to reflect on life.

Equilibrium becomes NIÑXS’s emotional center. The warmth from Karla’s community doesn’t erase complexity—it reframes it. Lapuerta’s lens catches moments of hesitation and doubt, but also joy, humor, and lots of ordinary teenage awkwardness.

The dynamic between the two reads as collaboration: two voices in conversation, old friends finishing each other’s sentences.

The film’s visual language mirrors that authenticity. There’s no artificial color grading, no stylized glow. The greens of Mexico’s tropical forest, the gray quarry streets, and the brown dust of the hills all live in the same frame. The result feels tactile, like a scrapbook brought to life cinematically.

The film takes the audience from the serenity of a child’s bedroom to the PRIDE march in Mexico City. Photo: courtesy of NIÑXS and Cinema Tropical

The small town where NIÑXS takes place, Tepoztlan, is part of an area in Mexico where queer people can generally express themselves openly. However, even as the town has become a hub for the hospitality, wellness, and spirituality industries in the last ten years, this place still retains cultural aspects from the country’s cultural umbrella, including its rooted machismo and normalized prejudice on LGBTQ members. Photo: courtesy of NIÑXS and Cinema Tropical

Niñxs is the non-gender-specific term to say kids in Spanish.

During a key exchange in the film between Karla and her father, she broaches the subject of starting hormone treatment. He hesitates, not from rejection, but from a parent’s wish for her to “accept herself the way she is and accept what life gives her.” From her perspective, she is accepting who she really is by stopping her body from looking like what she is not. It’s a moment of mutual understanding rather than conflict—tender and eye-opening.

The Skyline brought in film critic Rob Asher, an NYU-trained expert on queer cinema, writer of the acclaimed film index Film Sense, to weigh in. “The subject of the film seems very comfortable with itself,” he said. “It’s a film for queer people to enjoy.”

That distinction—the difference between representation as self-expression versus representation as outreach—marks Niñxs as a generational pivot. “LGBTQ films have advanced,” Rob added. “Gay porn was the only gay cinema there used to be.”

At a time when American trans youth are forced to navigate visibility and scrutiny from different authorities, Karla’s story plays like an exhale. It’s not activism. It’s not a spectacle. And that, in 2025, is a political act all its own.

NIÑXS is backed by Cinema Tropical, the most influencial Latin American Cinema distribuiter in the U.S.

Niñxs screens on October 16 at 6:45 p.m. at Nitehawk Prospect Park, with streaming available online through NewFest from October 9 to 21.