The film explores the concept of the trans icon. It uses a hybrid format, combining scholarly analysis with clips based on archived interviews, filmed with transgender actors.
Background
The film is an expansion of Joynt's short film of the same title, which premiered in 2019.[3][4]
The film premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival,[3] where Joynt won both the Audience Award and the Innovator Prize in the NEXT program.[6] In a critical review in Paste, Shayna Maci Warner wrote, "As a cinematic experience, the film feels pulled in several directions, formally incomplete and jagged."[4]IndieWire's review was similarly mixed, commenting negatively on the high proportion of academic content in the documentary, making it "feel more a history class than a story."[7]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 80% of 40 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.4/10. The website's consensus reads: "Framing Agnes may be frustratingly uneven as a work of cinematic storytelling, but that's often outweighed by its thoughtful expansion of established historical narrative."[10]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 69 out of 100, based on 9 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[11]