The End of Wonderland

American transgender adult performer Tara Emory has been working for years on her “trans sci-fi porn epic” Up Uranus. With almost no budget but an inexhaustible supply of creativity, she builds her own impressive retro-futuristic sets and “testostrobots”—all with a clear nod to low-budget 1950s science fiction and lots of fun sex.

The short extracts from Emory’s magnum opus are among the highlights of this unhurried portrait. The filmmakers followed her for several years, capturing everything from her hairline operation in Mexico to colorful photo shoots for her porn site, and a conversation with her mother. All the while, Emory’s focus is on shaping her life on her own conditions—as a sex worker, trans woman, filmmaker, costume designer, set designer, comic strip artist, and more.

Her threatened eviction from the shed she's converted into a studio is a setback, but maybe it will at last put an end to her hoarding—a problematic habit she inherited from her father, along with her skills as an auto mechanic. Her ability to repair old cars means she feels completely at home with the men at a car show when she turns up in her pink dress driving a self-refurbished Citroën 2CV.