Sweet Sixteen: A Transgender Story

This intimate and candid coming-of-age film follows a Welsh transgender teenager, Llyr Jones, as she turns 16.

As she moves from childhood to adulthood, Llyr’s understanding of herself crystallises, and she begins to explore the new possibilities of adulthood and identity.

The film captures the key milestones in her progression: presenting as female at her school’s Year 11 Leavers’ Day, travelling the 13-hour round-trip to London to get medical advice, celebrating her sixteenth birthday and beginning testosterone blockers.

Llyr, who still chooses to use her birth name, comes from a farming family in a rural, Welsh-speaking area near Aberystwyth in west Wales. Her situation is unusual in the local community, and the programme offers a unique insight into a transgender teen’s experience far from the diversity and cosmopolitan life of the city.

This programme explores how Llyr’s transition is breaking new ground in a traditional area dominated by farming. We show how this young Welsh teenager is navigating these momentous changes in her life and reveal the importance of family, friends and self-belief on the path to transitioning at a young age.

Llyr was a main contributor to the BBC Wales documentary Swansea Sparkle: A Transgender Story, filmed in 2015. The programme showed her winning the title of ‘Miss Swansea Sparkle 2015’ at Wales’s biggest transgender event.

Referencing footage from the other film, we track Llyr’s ongoing transition and explore how that formative experience at Swansea Sparkle continues to influence her.

Following this thread full circle, the programme sees Llyr return to Swansea Sparkle 2016 to crown the new winner, and we see her embark on the next stage in her transition with the prescription of testosterone blockers.