CASTRATION MOVIE
ANTHOLOGY I: TRAPS

a film by Louise Weard

FEATURE PRESENTATION

MAY 31, 2025 • 6:30 PM
@ THE BUS STOP THEATRE
(2203 GOTTINGEN STREET, HALIFAX)

2024 / CANADA / 275 mins

Runtime includes a ten-minute intermission

A Q&A WITH LOUISE WEARD WILL FOLLOW THE SCREENING

The first installment of Louise Weard’s Castration Movie Anthology (“a labyrinthine post-modern epic about gender”) is made up of Chapter i: Incel Superman and Chapter ii: Traps Swan Princess. The former follows Turner (Noah Baker), a socially inept production assistant trying to salvage his first love, while the latter tracks trans woman Michaela “Traps” Sinclair — a sex worker in Vancouver navigating relationships with friends, love interests and herself. 

It’s generally wise when promoting a screening to simply describe a film’s merits and avoid the temptation to set expectations too high or quote John Cassavetes. And yet it warrants saying that the care and empathy with which each character in Castration Movie is written and performed, and the assurance of its handheld, DIY cinematography, put many established directors to shame. 

Weard rejects easy and palatable characterizations, ensuring every character on screen is flawed, vulnerable, and funny (i.e. realistic). Funded largely from Kickstarter and shot on a Hi-8 camcorder, the beauty and conviction of Castration Movie remind us that the only thing you need to make powerful cinema is a belief in, to quote Cassavetes, “the validity of a person’s inner desires.” —Rebecca Falvey

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