When he would get home from school in the afternoons, one of the first things 14-year-old Kyler Prescott would do was head to the family pool to check for bees in the water. If there were any, he’d fish them out and rest the insects on nearby flowers so their wings could dry.
This moment of supreme gentleness is shared by Prescott’s mother, Katharine, in What Will I Become?, a new documentary making its North Carolina premiere at this year’s OUTSOUTH Queer Film Festival, which runs the week of August 13 in Durham.
It’s one of many such tender moments in a documentary with an otherwise very dark subject matter at its core: The high rates of suicide among trans boys. Per a 2018 study from the American Academy of Pediatrics, more than 50% of transgender boys have attempted suicide; since that study, there’s been a flurry of executive orders targeting the trans community—and in particular, transgender youth seeking gender-affirming care—and experts warn that mental health issues have likely worsened.
Directed by Lexie Bean and Logan Rozos, with Harper Steele (Will & Harper) as executive producer, What Will I Become? humanizes this statistic, with a loving look back at the lives of Prescott and Blake Brockington, two trans teenage boys who died by suicide in 2015.
What Will I Become? already saw a world premiere at Berlinale, where it won two juried prizes, including the Amnesty International Film Award. But the North Carolina premiere holds special significance: Brockington was from Charlotte and may be recognizable as East Mecklenburg High School’s 2014 homecoming king—the first openly transgender person to wear that crown in the state, a historic win that drew headlines and support, alongside threats and harassment that wore Brockington down.
The two teenagers, as depicted in the film, had fairly different personalities. Brockington, who died at 18, was goofy and charismatic, a go-getter. Prescott, who lived with his parents in San Diego and was a few years younger, was soft-spoken—a poet, gifted pianist, and animal lover. The two also had overlap: Both loved playing music and had come out early in their teenage years. Both suffered from deep depression.
What Will I Become? stitches together footage of Brockington from BrocKINGton, a documentary about his homecoming experience, alongside long interviews with Prescott’s parents—you truly ache for his family in this film—and both teens’ peers and mentors, including Brockington’s high school rugby coach. In one touching moment, the filmmakers commission a group of queer and trans musicians to put a poem by Prescott to music and perform it: “My mirror does not define me / not the stranger that looks back at me / my body does not define me.”
Design devices in documentaries can sometimes feel overdone, but What Will I Become? draws them in to poignant effect, filling the gaps that suicides leave behind. Brockington, a self-identified Tumblr teen (handle @brownboiimagic–blog), often processed his feelings online. Several sequences feature the Tumblr status box, sentences flashing and backspacing across the screen, as Brockington navigates the mixed way his family and the world handled his identity and hesitantly grapples with the pain lurking below his bubbly exterior.
Codirectors Bean and Rozos, who are both transmasculine and suicide survivors, play important guiding roles in the film. Several scenes take place in a blanket-fort-like enclosure lit softly with string lights, where they process the interviews alongside their own experiences: “When you first came out as a trans boy, what did you want to become?”
The care with which both directors handle painful interviews immediately stands out in the film—an example of the professional acuity that has earned this film accolades, yes, but also of the kind of keen, rare sensitivity that will leave you wanting to be more open, attentive, and kind to the people (and creatures) around you. And also, to yourself.
“When he’s talking, people listen. He’s the kind of person who makes you want to be better,” Brockington’s summer band camp teacher, Jessica, said in one interview—a takeaway that holds true of how viewers will feel about both boys, upon watching, but also about the film itself.
What Will I Become? has three screenings at OUTSOUTH, including a free screening on August 15 at 10 a.m., and the filmmakers plan to take it to Charlotte later this year.
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