I Am Mario: What Happens When Life Refuses Our Boxes?

Some of the most interesting stories begin when life refuses to follow the categories we created for it.

That is what drew me to the premise of I Am Mario, or Soy Mario, the debut feature from Mexican filmmaker Sharon Kleinberg.

Mario is a 40-year-old transgender taxi driver living in urban Mexico. He has built a stable life surrounded by colleagues, his mother, and two sisters. He also carries a longtime desire to become a father.

Then he unexpectedly becomes pregnant.

Suddenly, the possibility of having the family he wants collides with his understanding of his own masculinity.

I have not seen the film yet, so I cannot tell you whether I Am Mario succeeds in everything it sets out to do. What I can say is that its premise opens conversations that reach far beyond one character.

Who gets to define masculinity?

What happens when our bodies complicate the identities we have constructed?

And why are we so determined to make human beings fit neatly inside boxes when human life has never been particularly cooperative about staying there?

Mario Wants Something Beautifully Ordinary

One detail in the film’s description kept pulling me back.

Mario wants to be a father.

There is something beautifully ordinary about that desire.

He is not introduced through some grand political mission. According to materials from Cinema Tropical, Mario works as a taxi driver, has friendships with his colleagues, and maintains close relationships with his mother and sisters. His life already contains community and connection.

Parenthood represents another form of belonging he wants for himself.

The pregnancy creates an opportunity to fulfill that dream while simultaneously disrupting the way he understands his body and masculinity.

That tension interests me because identity rarely exists in isolation.

We understand ourselves through families, cultures, communities, histories, expectations, and relationships. Gender becomes part of that complicated web.

Sometimes the person we know ourselves to be fits comfortably inside the roles society recognizes.

Sometimes it does not.

Mexico, Masculinity and the Weight of Machismo

I Am Mario developed through three years of research and close collaboration with members of Mexico’s trans community, according to Cinema Tropical.

Kleinberg uses Mario’s pregnancy to examine traditional ideas about machismo and masculinity while keeping family, friendship, and belonging at the center of the story.

That cultural context gives the premise another dimension.

Anyone who has spent time thinking about gender knows that masculinity and femininity are not simply individual identities. Cultures teach us what each should look like.

Boys learn which emotions they may express.

Girls learn which behaviors make them acceptable.

Families reinforce some expectations and challenge others. Religion, media, economics, race, class, and community traditions add more layers.

Eventually, those ideas can start feeling natural even though human beings created them.

Machismo offers an especially visible example. Across many Latin American cultures, ideas about manhood have historically included expectations around strength, authority, sexuality, emotional restraint, and family roles.

Those expectations do not affect everyone identically, nor does Latin America have one universal culture. Still, they provide a powerful framework for asking what happens when someone’s lived experience refuses the script.

Gender Is Never Just About the Individual

Much of my professional work around gender has reinforced one lesson for me: you cannot understand a person’s choices without looking at the systems surrounding those choices.

Gender influences who speaks in a room, who controls resources, who performs unpaid labor, who receives authority, who feels safe participating, and whose knowledge gets recognized.

I have seen those dynamics play out in communities across different countries and cultures.

The details change.

The underlying negotiation between individual agency and social expectation appears again and again.

That is why stories about gender become much less interesting when we reduce them to labels.

I want to know about the person living inside the label.

What does that person want?

Who loves them?

What frightens them?

Where do they feel free?

Which relationships allow them to exist without explanation?

From the material released about I Am Mario, Kleinberg appears interested in those questions too.

I Keep Thinking About His Mother and Sisters

The film’s emphasis on Mario’s family immediately caught my attention.

Stories about people whose identities challenge social norms often focus heavily on rejection. Conflict makes obvious drama, so perhaps that is understandable.

Yet support can tell us just as much about a society.

Mario has a caring relationship with his mother and two sisters. The film also foregrounds friendship and his desire to belong rather than presenting his life solely through external hostility.

I find that choice compelling.

Family is often where our earliest ideas about gender begin. It is where many of us first learn what a woman should do, what a man should do, how mothers behave, how fathers behave, and what kinds of lives earn approval.

Families can also become places where those definitions expand.

When somebody we love does not fit what we were taught to expect, we have a choice.

We can protect the rule.

Or we can protect the relationship.

Parenthood Has Always Been Bigger Than Biology

Mario’s pregnancy also raises an interesting question about how we define parenthood.

We attach enormous cultural meaning to pregnancy. Motherhood, femininity, reproduction, caregiving, and family often become tangled together until we begin treating them as interchangeable.

Real families have always been more complicated.

Grandparents raise children.

Fathers become primary caregivers.

People adopt.

Extended families share responsibilities.

Friends become family.

Across cultures, human beings have created countless arrangements for raising and caring for children.

Mario’s story pushes that conversation somewhere contemporary while asking an ancient question.

What makes someone a parent?

The ability to become pregnant?

A gender?

A title?

Or the decision to accept responsibility for another human life?

An Award-Winning Performance From Someone New to Film

Mario is played by Oustin de León, a non-professional trans actor and Tae Kwon Do master.

That casting decision interests me almost as much as the premise.

Kleinberg came to filmmaking after a 25-year career spanning theater, acting, and playwriting. According to the film’s press materials, she incorporated de León’s physical discipline and lived experience into her approach while surrounding him with experienced professional actors.

The result has already received significant recognition.

At the Guadalajara International Film Festival, de León received the Mezcal Award for Best Actor. I Am Mario also received the Jury’s Maguey Award for Best LGBTQIA+ Film.

Now the film is heading onto a larger international stage.

From Guadalajara to Toronto and New York

I Am Mario will make its international premiere in the Discovery section of the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival, which runs September 10 through September 20.

The film then heads to the New York Latino Film Festival for its U.S. premiere during the festival’s September 15 through September 20 run.

For travelers already heading to Toronto during TIFF, I would leave time beyond the screenings to experience the city itself. Toronto’s neighborhoods tell stories about migration from across the world, and exploring them is often far more interesting than limiting a visit to downtown landmarks. Looking through local Toronto food and cultural experiences on GetYourGuide can help you find ideas that connect you to those communities.

The same principle applies in New York.

A Latino film festival becomes even more interesting when you allow the films to send you into the city around them. New York’s Latin American and Caribbean communities offer countless opportunities to experience food, art, music, history, and everyday culture beyond a theater.

That is one of my favorite things about film festivals.

A good film can change the way you look at the city after you walk outside.

Stories Can Complicate What We Thought We Understood

I do not need every film to give me answers.

Sometimes I prefer the ones that make the questions harder.

I Am Mario enters a cultural conversation where people often arrive with strong opinions before they encounter an individual story.

Cinema can interrupt that pattern.

For 97 minutes, an abstract debate can become one person’s life.

Mario has a job.

He has a family.

He has friends.

He has insecurities.

He has a body that complicates how he understands himself.

And he wants to become a father.

Whatever conclusions viewers ultimately draw, they first have to encounter Mario as a human being rather than a talking point.

That is one of storytelling’s greatest strengths.

Maybe the Boxes Were Always Too Small

I have spent enough time working across cultures to know that people are infinitely more complicated than the categories we create for them.

Gender does not exist outside culture.

Neither does family.

Neither does masculinity.

We inherit ideas about all three, then spend our lives deciding which ones fit and which ones we need to renegotiate.

Mario’s unexpected pregnancy forces that negotiation into the open.

He wants fatherhood while experiencing something society traditionally associates with motherhood. His body creates one possibility while challenging another part of his identity.

There is no neat little box for that.

Perhaps that is the point.

Human beings were here long before most of the categories we use to explain ourselves.

Maybe our lives are not failing to fit the boxes.

Maybe the boxes were always too small.