Writers: Lexie Bean, Isidore Bethel and Miles Hill
Director: Lexie Bean and Logan Rozos
“All we can expect from visibility is hate” states one contributor to Lexie Bean and Logan Rozos’ documentary What Will I Become, sensitively exploring the topic of suicide among transmasculine youth. Showing at the BFI Flare Festival 2026, this 90-minute documentary is made with care, telling the story of two trans men in America – Blake Brockington and Kyler Prescott – whose lives are celebrated by friends and family, hopefully exploring the ways in which they influenced and inspired others, while simultaneously recognising the lack of understanding from schools and pressures from communities and online commentators that resulted in them taking their own lives in their teens and early twenties.
This is a very personal project, the directors placing themselves in the documentary as subjects, interviewers and filmmakers, talking openly about their own experiences as suicide survivors in a safe space created for the film, a tented space indoors where they share reflections and responses with one another and the audience. These sections act as focus points during the film, a place to return to where the meaning of What Will I Become and the wider implications for transmasculinity, while their honesty and openness presents a picture of warmth and support.
Around this, Bean and Rozos share the stories of Blake and Kyler, laid out in chapters through the film mixing videos, posts and photographs from their social media feeds and other writing with interviews with those who knew them. The film starts from a place of positivity, showcasing the personalities of Blake and Kyler, the effect they had on others and the potential their lives offered. There are some particularly lovely moments that seem hopeful including Blake being voted Homecoming King in his school and an interview from his high school rugby coach who is clearly still affected by the loss.
But the sadness comes in the second half of the film as these positive events are met with media outrage and comments from strangers that are hard to see, a level of outrage and prejudice that seems far beyond anything a teenager should be subjected to. Bean and Rozos show the cumulative effect of that well, how sometimes it inspired Blake and Kyler to campaign more, to be activists but how ultimately the scrutiny proved too much as parents and friends describe the effect of their deaths.
It’s not often that a documentary feels so infused by the warmth and positivity of the filmmakers themselves who bring such understanding and empathy to their subject. And it’s hard to leave What Will I Become without feeling the impact of the losses it describes and the unfathomable reaction to young people trying to make a difference by being who they are.
BFI Flare 2026 runs from 18-29 March.
