Siempre Fui Álex
2016 · 6m · España
Directed by Roberto Ruiz Céspedes, Sancho Ortiz de Lejarazu
Genres: coming-of-age, documentary, LGBTQ+
Tones: contemplative, tender
Álex is a twelve-year-old trans boy from a small Madrid neighbourhood who plays, dances, dreams, and laughs with his parents while much of society refuses to accept him as he is; this documentary follows his everyday life.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects the trans kid doc to be a sermon, but Ruiz Céspedes and Ortiz de Lejarazu just... let Álex exist — playing, dancing, being bored — which somehow becomes the most radical argument against the premise that his life needs justifying.
A formally disciplined documentary that resists the melodramatic pull of its subject matter, instead positioning everyday joy and parental tenderness within a lineage of humanist cinema that trusts observation over rhetoric.
The masterstroke is the decision to film Álex at play and rest rather than in conflict — that choice to let the camera simply *witness* rather than intervene transforms six minutes into something that feels like knowing him, not being told about him.