The title of Jamie Kiernan O’Brien’s latest short film, “Gender Studies,” which will premiere at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, is a double entendre.
The film takes place in a college feminist literature course as transgender student Maisie studies both the course curriculum and her classmate, Rachel, whom she sees as the pinnacle of femininity.
For O’Brien, a transgender director who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English from New York University, the film’s setting and emotions are very much autobiographical.
“I was in a lot of weird, small literature courses with a lot of other girls,” she explained. “I just always had that one girl in class who, for one reason or another, sometimes I couldn’t explain why, had everything I wanted or attracted the kind of attention that I was envious of.”
As Maisie pursues the same teaching assistant Rachel has been sleeping with, “Gender Studies” explores how not all gender-affirming experiences — like being disrespected by a man — are positive ones.
“Sex can, especially when you’re younger, be a status symbol as opposed to actually about desire,” O’Brien explained. “These early sexual experiences can be bad or make you feel bad about yourself or make you feel like you’re doing something wrong. But even that in and of itself is femininity because that’s what happens in all the coming of age movies and the books.”
Maisie’s mistakes are spurred on by her misinterpretation of a class reading assignment: “Summer,” Edith Wharton’s 1917 novel about a girl’s sexual awakening.
“Gender Studies” isn’t the first time O’Brien has taken cues from classic literature. The director’s first short film was an adaptation of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1982 short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper.”
In dread-filled journal entries, the story satirizes the dismissive attitudes toward women’s mental health that were prevalent at the time.
Inspired by the idea of wider society oversimplifying women’s mental health issues, O’Brien created an adaptation that explores the boiling down of the transgender experience into a wholly medical one, with gender reassignment surgery as a magical, one-size-fits-all solution.
“The idea of using classic feminist literature to talk about contemporary trans issues, I feel, bridges the gap between cis women and trans women,” she said. “We’re all dealing with all the same shit. It’s just with a slightly different coating around it for trans women.”
O’Brien jumped from surreal horror to comedy with her second short film, “Egg,” which mines laughter from the main character’s insistence that the old man interviewing her for a job is secretly transgender.
In “Gender Studies,” O’Brien rides the line between genres to create audience discomfort. In Maisie’s head, she’s the protagonist of an erotic thriller a la Michael Haneke’s “The Piano Teacher.” But in reality, she’s the naive yet sympathetic victim of an awkward coming-of-age drama.
“I have definitely had these strong moments of feeling on the sidelines of experiences that all my girlfriends are having,” O’Brien said. “It never is fully solved. It just gains new context, and you beat yourself up less about feeling inadequate.”
“Gender Studies” will premiere as part of the Short Film Program 2 at 3:15 p.m. on Jan. 24 at The Yarrow Theatre.
Learn more and reserve tickets at tinyurl.com/cpftm2f2.
‘Gender Studies’ in-person screenings
- 3:15 p.m., Jan. 24, The Yarrow Theatre
- 3 p.m., Jan. 28, Broadway Centre Cinemas 3
- 10:20 a.m., Jan. 29, Megaplex Redstone 3
- 10 a.m., Jan. 30, Holiday Village Cinemas 2
Online
- 8 a.m., Jan. 29-11:55 p.m., Feb. 1