Aman (2026)
There is a quietly radical premise at the heart of Aman, Rahul Roye's short film, and for the most part it handles it with real tenderness and grace. I watched it at the BFI London Film Festival and found it a beautiful, touching and genuinely challenging piece of LGBTQ cinema. Three and a half stars, held just short of the top by a story that, for all its richness of idea, is very light in the telling.
The setup is a striking one. Aman is a trans man, on the very eve of the gender-affirming surgery he has long been working towards, when he discovers that he is pregnant by his secret lover. It is a wonderful dramatic knot, the collision of a body he is trying to leave behind with a new life growing inside it, and the film uses it to ask thoughtful questions about masculinity, fatherhood and what it means to live honestly as yourself. Kabir Maan, a trans actor making his debut in the role, carries it with a grounded, affecting dignity.
Much of the film's warmth comes from Aman's relationship with his sister, a trans woman and his chosen family, with whom he wrestles over what to do. Their scenes together have a lovely, lived-in intimacy, and it is to them that the film gives its finest moment. When Aman eventually tracks down his secret lover, it is only to find the man has a wife, and that the two of them have been trying for a baby of their own for years, a small, deftly handled gut punch that reframes everything that has gone before.
The ending is where it really sings. Aman is being driven home on the back of his sister's motorcycle when her wig flies off into the road, and when he asks why she is not stopping to retrieve it, she simply replies, does a wig make me your sister? It is a lovely, quietly profound closing note about identity and belonging being so much deeper than the surfaces we present, and it lingered with me far longer than the running time might suggest.
Three and a half stars. Aman is well produced, well acted and handles a bold premise with care and heart. My only real reservation is that it is so slight, sixteen minutes is simply not enough room for a story this rich, and at its core it stays quite simple when you sense a fuller, deeper film waiting inside it. But as a warm, humane and thought-provoking short it does lovely work, and I would happily watch whatever Roye and Maan do next.
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