Desire Lines

  Directed by: Jules Rosskam Released: 2025 (educational) Year of Production: 2024 Running Time: 81 min Language: English Subtitle Options: English Closed Captions Subjects:  Gender Studies, Queer Studies                          Desire Lines is a hybrid feature film that blends personal interviews, archival materials, and narrative fiction as a framework for exploring the complicated and often unwritten history of transmasculine sexuality. Testimonials from transgender men both past and present dissect how cultural expectations, political agendas, and gatekeeping practices shape the locus of desire.  The fictional story centers on Ahmad, an Iranian expat who arrived in the US at the onset of the AIDS crisis. Now in his 60s, concealing his trans identity for decades has meant distancing himself from intimacy. Ahmad comes to the LGBTQ archives of Chicago to explore his latent homosexuality and engage in fantasy to reimagine his life as an out, gay trans man.   He is assiste