Edhi Alice

On the comparatively rare occasions that trans people are invited to speak for themselves on screen, they are frequently asked about ‘the trans experience’. It’s as reductive as asking about ‘the female experience’. There is no one size fits all way to transition. Edhi Alice, the closing film of this year’s Queer East, makes this point by profiling two Korean trans women side by side. Their lives are very different, and it’s telling that the points of commonality emerge mostly as a result of how they are perceived by other people.

“I’m Alice who is living in the present,” says the first. It’s an interesting choice of words, pointing to the incompleteness of her pre-transition life and to uncertainty about the future. She’s a film lighting director, using the nickname she was given by director Lee Joon-ik, who compared her to Lewis Carrol’s famous heroine. Her height is an advantage in her profession, which involves a lot of reaching upwards, but less so when it comes to going about day to day life without her transness being obvious to other people. Whilst she makes no mention of harassment, she has had probable issues with workplace discrimination. She relishes the chance to use a public bath during the film because she feels that she’ll never have the chance to do so again – that she’ll just never be accepted.

It’s a difficult life for someone who grew up, as many trans women do, just assuming that she was a girl; she still remembers a phone call with her sister who unwittingly devastated her by telling her that she was becoming a man. Perhaps facial surgery – the norm for trans women in Korea – would help, but she doesn’t see it as worthwhile because she’s in her forties so doesn’t anticipate any kind of romantic life – which says something pretty grim about the lives of women generally. For her, the important thing was to feel right in her body, and genital surgery helped with that. What she has always wanted to do, she admits somewhat shyly, is to try dancing – so the documentary team fixes her up with a dance teacher. The effect of lessons which begin with teaching bodily confidence is astonishing to see, and quite a treat to be privy to.

The second woman goes by the nickname Edhi. She acquires a new name during the course of the film, from a fortune teller whom she consults about surgery and who, as fortune tellers everywhere are wont to do, throws in a bit of romantic advice at the same time. Shorter and distinctly curvy, she could easily blend in but for her English-language ‘nobody knows I’m trans’ t-shirt. She’s an active part of the LGBTQ+ community, counselling young people and doing aerobics at a gay men’s human rights group. She thought she must be gay, she says, until a pivotal encounter with a transvestite and her realisation that he felt completely differently about his body from how she did about hers.

Though it doesn’t actually have conscription, South Korean society exerts strong social pressure for young men to serve in the military, something that Edhi put herself through in spite of everything. In relation to this, the film the famous case of Byun Hui-su, who came out whilst serving and was discharged against her will. The grim result of this casts a shadow over some of what follows, but it highlights the way that society is beginning to change, as – in a much more positive way – does one of Edhi’s coming out experiences.

Where Alice kept company with an aloof-looking cat, Jiyul, Edhi adopts a puppy who is the opposite in every way, and a determined scene stealer. This helps to keep our attention on the present as future plans are made. The latter part of the film deals with Edhi’s genital surgery, along with the follow-up treatment rarely referenced outside the trans community itself. Although the camera is briefly present during medical procedures, this is sensitively and respectfully handled. The approach of the medical professionals means that these scenes come across less as pathologising transness and more as a sympathetic reflection on how a lot of women feel about intimate procedures.

Despite its overtly artificial structure, the film captures something that feels very natural, spending time with its subjects until they’re completely at ease. It’s quiet and thoughtful in its approach, deliberately steering away from sensation, but it draws out enough of their personalities to hold viewer interest throughout. Those unfamiliar with trans people will find a lot of their questions answered, but most importantly, they will get to know two individuals whose most compelling characteristic is their humanity.

Reviewed on: 12 May 2025