Frameline50: Adam’s Apple

“I love watching time unfold.” Amy muses as she intently watches a caterpillar form into its chrysalis. Always with a camera in hand, Amy has been intentionally documenting time unfolding (a practice she says comes from simultaneously not wanting to let go while letting go) as seasons change, as constellations move across the night sky, and as her transgender child, Adam, grows up — even more so over the last eight years while the two have been filming this documentary together, shifting between gaze and subject with ease.

It is a privilege to witness the easy intimacy between mother and son, moments of resilience, humor, playfulness, vulnerability and realness, punctuated by simple, day-to-day “I love you’s.” Through the universality of their two lenses, we understand not only Adam’s gender but also Amy’s struggles parenting a teenager and grasping for the way things used to be before girlfriends, cars, college applications, and the pandemic. Fresh from its premiere at SXSW, this beautifully intimate film is the story of three characters: a trans kid, a mother, and the ever-present march forward of time.