Rahul Roye’s ‘Aman’ Selected For TIFF 2026, Puts Trans Masculinity And Pregnancy In Focus
· Free Press Journal
Rahul Roye's short film Aman, starring transgender activists Kabir Maan and Sirat Taneja, has been selected for the Short Cuts programme of the 2026 Toronto Film Festival, which runs from September 10 to 20. Co-written with nonbinary filmmaker Elle León (Nostas), the film follows a trans man who discovers he is pregnant, forcing a profound reckoning with identity, masculinity, and fatherhood.
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For Rahul, the impulse behind the film is deeply personal. Being genderqueer, he says, meant he could never fit himself into the pre-existing algorithms set by a colonial, heteronormative gender binary. "Rather I've always seen it to be more of a political tool designed to preserve hierarchy. Aman grew from that discomfort," says Rahul, whose recent film was A Lullaby for Yellow Roses.
That discomfort translates into a deliberate creative method of creating intimate spaces where larger political conflicts can be experienced through an individual's everyday life. "I wanted to stay very close to Aman and allow his experience to exist without apology. The politics of the film comes from that intimacy."
Intimacy is the lens through which the film defies categorisation. The film attempts to make space for bodies and identities that resist simplification, and to celebrate the freedom of simply being. "For me, it always comes back to one thing: compassion over comprehension."
That principle is evident in the choice to place a trans man at the film's centre. Aman's pregnancy, Rahul argues, exposes the fragility of definitions of gender. "Aman knows he is a man. The pregnancy does not make him question whether he is a man. It makes him question what we have been taught a man is allowed to be. Pregnancy creates a much more uncomfortable question: If a man can become pregnant, what exactly have we been using to define masculinity? Anatomy? Reproduction? Behaviour? Social recognition?"
What interested Rahul most was the contradiction between how Aman understands himself and what the world insists his pregnant body must mean. "Pregnancy does not feminise Aman. Instead, it reveals how aggressively we gender biological functions. It allowed the film to separate masculinity from anatomy and question the foundation of gender roles."
Such nuance demanded a cast that could speak to the experience from within. About casting Kabir and Sirat, Rahul says they brought knowledge that cannot be researched from the outside. "There are things a screenplay can describe and things that only become visible when someone tells you, 'A trans person wouldn't say this,' or, 'This gesture feels wrong,' or even, 'This is technically correct, but emotionally it isn't how this experience feels.' Kabir and Sirat brought that kind of intelligence to the film constantly."
They also kept transness from becoming performance. "They understood the exhaustion of being looked at, the negotiation involved in entering certain spaces, the humour within queer and trans friendships, the complicated relationship many trans people have with medical institutions, and the difference between how somebody explains themselves publicly and how they exist around people they trust," says Rahul.
Their activism gave them a political vocabulary, but their lived experience gave the film something even more valuable: detail. "Cinema finally survives in detail and absolute authenticity."
That attention to detail extends to the film's quieter social critique. Aman's pregnancy also raises questions of access to healthcare for the transgender community — access shaped by class, geography, family support, and social privilege. "For many trans people in India, the question is not only whether healthcare exists, but whether they can afford it, reach it, find an affirming doctor, take time away from work, or make reproductive choices without risking their livelihood or family support.” Rahul adds that this becomes even more complex for transmasculine people, whose reproductive and healthcare needs are still rarely spoken about. “Aman reflects that reality very quietly. It asks us to recognise that autonomy means very different things depending on the resources, support and freedom a person has around them."
These questions feel especially urgent now. Rahul says making the film feels particularly important at a time when the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, 2026 narrows the legal definition of transgender people. "The previous 2019 definition expressly included trans men and trans women regardless of whether they had undergone surgery or hormone therapy, as well as genderqueer people. The 2026 amendment removes those express categories and replaces them with a much narrower list centred on specified socio-cultural identities, certain congenital intersex variations, and people forced into a transgender identity through particular interventions. It also removes Section 4(2), which had said that transgender people had a right to self-perceived gender identity. Aman is precisely the kind of person who exposes the limits of such categorisation."
Behind the camera, the production reflected the same spirit of inclusion. "Everyone in the cast and crew is queer-affirming, and many are queer allies," says Rahul.
Abid Aziz Merchant, Apoorva Bakshi, Tushar Tyagi, Neeraj Churi, and Elle León (Nostas) are the producers; Nikkhil Advani and Dominique Welinski are the executive producers; and Anadi Athaley is the editor. The cinematography was done by Tamás A. Méder, with Aditya Sharma as the additional cinematographer. Mriganka was the sound director, and Sahil Multani was the script supervisor. "Aman truly belongs to all of them," Rahul signs off.