Really Happy Someday – BFI Flare 2025

Writer: J Stevens and Breton Lalama

Director: J Stevens

For musical theatre performer Z, his voice is everything but 12 months into taking testosterone as part of transitioning it starts to crack, unable to get through an audition as his voice box changes. J. Stevens and Breton Lalama’s film Really Happy Someday, screening at BFI Flare, explores Z’s efforts to reclaim his singing voice through coaching but also exploring the challenges of his new identity as other parts of his life also shift in response to these changes.

Really Happy Someday is a story of having to move away from yourself in order to find your way back as Z essentially upturns his life during the course of the film, jettisoning both work and a long-term relationship but through that process is able to discover new avenues to achieve the things that he wants. Stevens and Lalama manage that progression well and with empathy for Z as the months unfold.

Some of the film’s strongest scenes are set in the vocal coach’s home where Z attends regular sessions to try to recapture the vocal strength he needs to return to singing professionally. The gradual connection that develops between them is very nicely played, scenes that often feel improvised have an essential truth and consequently work well. These scenes also feel like the heart of Really Happy Someday with Z becoming obviously more vulnerable, the ability to sing so bound into his identity that the stakes feel higher in these moments and the eventual payoff more satisfying for the character and the audience.

And there is a feeling of improvisation in some of the scenes that add to the reality, particularly as it draws on both Stevens and Lalama’s experiences, helping the audience to see some of the challenges and impacts of transitioning on wider relationship but most especially Z’s sense of self which sometimes feels overwhelmed and pressured by the process, particularly in changes to the vocal tones that affect his singing ability.

The relationship elements of the film, though positively presented, are less surprising as Z trades one relationship for another, and while there is obvious chemistry with bar manager Santi played by Xavier Lopez, the story follows a fairly predictable romcom trajectory. Although they share a microphone at a Karaoke bar, what we never see in this scenario are the two aspects of Z’s life crossing over, a place where Santi and the musical theatre element of the film properly coalesce to suggest the all-round support that makes this couple worth investing in.

Playing Z, Lalama maintains the audience’s focus through the emotional highs and lows but also the physical impacts of daily testosterone injects and chest binding framed with a positive body image. There is more of Z’s story to uncover perhaps in what happens beyond the self-acceptance the film concludes with but this Canadian submission to Flare has an engaging authenticity that hits a lot of the right notes.

Really Happy Someday is screening at BFI Flare 2025 from 19-30 March.