After All (2024) – Film Review
- Trans_Muted
- Apr 7
- 5 min read
By Rebys J. Hynes
Follow on Instagram & Letterboxd
Content Note: discussion of transphobia and suicide.
It is difficult to find media that treats suicide – in particular trans / queer suicide – with the necessary weight and complexity. Suicide on film is so often a twist or a plot beat. It is severed from its connection to the epidemic of suicide that exists in the world. It is precisely because it is so difficult to find films that depict suicide and its aftermath well that I want to talk about what is so beautiful about the short film After All.
I had the privilege of seeing After All (2024, directed by Chongyan Liu) at the MINT Chinese Film Festival, and it stood out to me because of the sensitivity and humanity with which it approached the subject of trans suicide. It follows Ning Yang (Chuning Dai), an international student at Berlin University, as she has her first session with a therapist (Antonia Sandrock) in the wake of the suicide of her best friend, a trans woman named Maiy. It is a fictionalised retelling of the filmmaker’s experience at university, and the film is dedicated to the real Maiy.
When I say film has a tendency to narrativize suicide, I mean that there is often a very clear cause-and-effect in its depiction. They did it because this happened, and if that had not happened, they would not have done it. This is a gross oversimplification, that fails to take into account the multitude of intersecting factors that culminate in suicide. Think of 13 Reasons Why, a show literally named after its cause-and-effect depiction of suicide. This rhetoric puts the onus on individuals and their actions – which can be important – but it avoids looking at suicide as a societal and structural problem, that goes far beyond the individual.[1] Regarding trans suicide, there is often a cisgenderist conflation of transness as causing suicide, casting trans people as tragic figures rather than attempting to understand the multitude of factors that contribute to trans people having a significantly higher suicide attempt rate than cisgender people. Poor depictions of suicide on film are a massive problem, because film often creates the language for how we discuss issues. If we continue to talk about suicide in terms of specific causes, we will continue to ignore the truth that suicide is a complex, structural issue.
In After All, there are no judgements made or conclusions drawn around Maiy’s suicide. It is not interested in diagnosing causes. Instead, this is a 25-minute open and explorative conversation about the fact that it did happen, and now Ning must continue to live her life knowing that it happened, carrying it with her. There is very little narrative here: to narrativize is to simplify, and After All is not interested in simplifying.
There is no actress playing Maiy, and she never appears in the film. The film is entirely a dialogue between two cisgender people – Ning and her therapist. At first this seems like the sort of depiction of trans suicide that I would typically say we need less of. Too often our stories have been told by cisgender people, cutting us out of the narrative. But here, I think it completely works. To Ning, Maiy’s death is a complete absence. So often depictions of suicide will have the character linger in some way. Returning to 13 Reasons Why, the ghost of Hannah Baker haunts the second season. And this might be some people’s experience of grief, especially following a suicide – that the person follows us wherever we go. But After All really captured an experience of grief closer to my own – a complete separation between the old world and the new, and the sense of complete absence. We are not privy to see Maiy because even Ning is struggling to hold onto an image of her.
My favourite moment of the film is when Ning fixates on the photo chosen for Maiy’s funeral. She wonders, ‘Who chose it? Why isn’t she facing the camera?’, and her inability to hold onto Maiy is exacerbated by an image that doesn’t truly capture her: ‘… now – that image of her – is final’. The beat captures perfectly a pain unique to trans suicide – an anxiety that we will be buried in a way that does not reflect who we are, with a photo in which we are not truly seen. Transness is such a radical act of self-determination, but inevitably in death our image belongs to other people. It’s only a passing beat, but it is loaded with so much pain and such deep understanding of its trans subject.
There is a ghostly quality to After All. It is told with stark, minimalist visuals across a seemingly empty university campus. Ning fades in and out of the film like a spectre, not truly grounded in the world. This haunting quality perfectly distils the feeling of unreality that can so often come with grief. In the final moments of the film the backdrop becomes a green screen – where our characters sat moments ago is suddenly a set. This is a touching nod to the fact that this film is a recreation of the director’s own experiences, as well as an acknowledgement that grief can so often feel like being on a set; nothing is quite real and it feels as though you are giving a performance.
Therapy on film is often overwritten, a narrative tool for exposition so far removed from what therapy actually is. In its first few scenes, After All seems like it is going to continue this filmic tradition. Sandrock’s therapist asks exposition-opening questions that do facilitate a beautiful performance from Dai, but feel unnatural. However, the film steadily grows into its depiction of therapy, and by the second half the therapist’s question-asking and conversation steering feels organic and authentic in a way rarely seen on film. Films often treat therapy as if it a question-and-answer session, but for many people therapy is more like a tour through your own emotions. It is remarkable that After All manages to capture this, when so few films have succeeded before.
This is a tremendous film, and I highly recommend you keep an eye out for it. In a filmic landscape where suicide is so often a plot beat, it is refreshing to see a film that takes the time to explore the effects and the emotions of suicide without ever giving into easy answers or half-baked judgements. After All presents a model of how film can discuss trans suicide in the future – not by looking for easy answers, but by sharing, talking and exploring our emotions.
[1] I recommend Queer Youth, Suicide and Self-Harm: Trouble Subjects, Troubling Norms by Katrina Roen and Elizabeth McDermott, for its approach to queer suicide as a societal issue.
By Rebys J. Hynes Follow on Instagram & Letterboxd
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