5 trans travel road trip movies that really went there

The trans road trip genre is older and more expansive than you might think.

Even in the 90s, long before we could count on meaningful trans representation in any area, we had breakout mainstream films that placed trans bodies in perilous cross-country journeys without dwelling on the potential for trauma.

Instead, these movies—both then and now—focus on the joy of trans travel. During a moment that’s made the idea of hitting the open road increasingly fraught for trans travellers, let’s take a glance at the films that did it well and left us with a serious case of wanderlust.

To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar

Pack your bags, we’re going on an adventure

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for the best LGBTQ+ travel guides, stories, and more.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today

It’s hard to believe that this sensitive, hilarious, and tender (if often simplistic) comedy made its way to screens in 1995, during the AIDS crisis and the conservative backlash to gay art we see parodied in that other 1995 classic, The Birdcage. This movie—which mostly holds up—is a minor miracle, and, like The Birdcage, it distinguishes itself by positioning its queer characters as better, kinder, more moral Christians than the hicks they visit on their cross-country journey. And yes, they’re technically drag queens, not trans people, but if John Leguizamo’s Chi-Chi isn’t a trans egg waiting to hatch, I don’t know what is.

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

Several things about this Aussie classic haven’t weathered super well, but Terence Stamp’s sensitive portrayal of a deeply annoyed trans woman isn’t one of them. Saddled with two drag queens and stuck in the middle of nowhere in Australia’s legendary bush, Stamp’s Bernadette Bassenger is tired, ticked off, and devastated by the loss of her former love. Luckily, she finds love in just about the least expected place there is—on the road, in Broken Hill. Never has a doll had to put up with so much just to get a ride to Alice Springs, and never has it been so wildly entertaining.

In France, Michelle is a Man’s Name

Emil Weinstein’s OutFest 2020 winner is only 12 minutes, but it packs a wallop. In the 12-minute short, a transmasc travels home to the South to have a difficult, if somewhat gender-affirming, talk with his father in a risque club. The conversation is awkward, and the situation is all too familiar for anyone whose struggled to have their true gender acknowledged by their family. But like any good director, Weinstein gets the most not through dialogue but through the silences. We see our hero fitting uncomfortably in his childhood room, trying to relate to the cis masculinity of the unfamiliar world he left behind, and never once letting his guard down. The takeaway is something we already knew, but it bears repeating: we’ll never really be able to go home again because we’ve changed too much, in ways that hurt. But if we try, we can still find connections even with people we thought we’d lost long ago.

Cowboys

If you’d told me in 2019 that one of the most moving trans stories of the coming year would star Steve Zahn, I wouldn’t have believed you. But the quickly forgotten Cowboys is that movie, a trans take on Midnight Special, Shane, and all those classic fathers-protecting-sons epics that take us far from home in pursuit of a better life. It’s a far from perfect movie that often puts the father’s struggle before the child’s, but it’s a moving look at what it takes to support and protect a trans child, with a moving portrait of addiction and recovery thrown in. 

Will & Harper

In 2024, comedian Will Ferrell did the most shocking thing a comedian could do: treat a trans woman not as the butt of a joke, but the subject of a tender, caring documentary. After Ferrell’s longtime friend and comedy writer collaborator Harper Steele comes out as a trans woman, Ferrell decides to document their friendship via a road trip and expose Americans to the joy of trans personhood along the way. It’s a mostly lovely journey, if some dodgy decisions were made (like when they leave Harper alone in a bar in the middle of nowhere). Most of all, Will and Harper is a reminder to cis people that you don’t have to leave your trans friends behind even if you don’t fully understand who they are yet.

You can always bring us along for the ride.

Related

Jim Parsons, Frankie Grande, Tituss Burgess and more at the Broadway opening of Titaníque
The spoof musical about the Titanic, as re-told by Celine Dione, is now on the Great White Way.

Join the GayCities newsletter for weekly updates on the best LGBTQ+ destinations and events—nearby and around the world.