Set in New York City’s Chinatown, Bust follows plainclothes police officer Flora (Lux Pascal), who has been given the assignment of incriminating a ketamine dealer, Ruby (Nicky DeMarie). While the arrest goes off without a hitch, what fills Angalis Field’s film with tension is that the customer and dealer are both trans women. Ruby, who has lost a friend to a recent overdose and is selling to raise the necessary funds for a future medical procedure, shares with Flora her personal woes. Listening to these struggles, Flora appears close to succumbing to crippling internalized guilt. Is Flora a sellout for setting up a member of her own community to be arrested? Is she nothing more than a pawn for two cis co-workers who get to do the easy work of making the arrest and, in the process, pulling more trans women off the streets? Interrogating themes of identity and the unspoken obligations one is supposed to have toward their community, Bust is a complex political thriller.

“I came to film quite late,” says Field, who was raised in Oregon. He now reflects, “[As] I wasn’t really allowed to watch TV and didn’t have any video games—you know, Portland in the early 2000s—cinema was not on my radar much. But I was a very avid photographer and writer as a kid. Film, I think in some ways, is the confluence of those two mediums.” Too nerdy and bookish to have considered photography as a field of study for his collegiate career, Field left the west coast and moved to New York at 18 to attend Columbia University’s Barnard College, majoring in English. Experiencing culture shock within the city and on campus (“Many of the students were coming from prep schools, and I was so outside of the social circles that everyone seemed to already be attuned to”), Field netted a casting internship with his photography hero, Ryan McGinley, and met students from other New York universities who were taking their respective artforms as seriously as Field was taking his English essays. His interest in photography returned, and a few years after graduating from Barnard in 2016, samples of Field’s work were featured in The New York Times and the subject of a solo exhibit at Company Gallery’s satellite, baby Company.

Around this time, Field realized he wanted to study film production and applied to NYU Tisch’s MFA program, submitting his photo work and a few writing samples. “At the time, I believed I couldn’t be a director unless I was taught it in some institutional form, which is fundamentally untrue.” He’ll be the first to tell you that he’s been brainwashed into believing that higher education is a way to establish oneself in the world or that it’s the only the way to learn, yet Field is grateful for having been accepted into the program, from which he graduated earlier this year.

Named after the Oregon city that much of Field’s family hails from, The Dalles, the director’s second-year, 10-minute short, follows a trans teen who takes an interest in an older queer man from out of town who asks for directions to a local cruising spot alongside the Columbia River Gorge. Understated and personal, The Dalles was well received at NYU and went on to premiere at Sundance in 2023. With Welcome to the Dollhouse director Todd Solondz as his advisor, Field wanted his next film, the thesis short Bust, to be about trans women and to be shot on 16mm, emulating the gritty texture of New York City–set indies like Paris Is Burning, Kids and Uncut Gems. Having previously worked with Lux Pascal, a Julliard student at the time, for an NYU class on directing actors, Field cast her as the undercover cop at the center of the narrative.

Since its debut at this year’s Sundance, Bust’s critical acclaim has led to Field receiving the New Voices Filmmaker Grant from NewFest, worth $25,000 and to be put toward developing new work. Field is currently using this opportunity to hone a feature script he’s been writing with his Bust co-writer Eliza Callahan for three years, with the goal of going into production in late 2025. “I’ve been told you have to get the ball rolling down the hill,” Field relays optimistically, “and then other people jump on board. So, I’m knocking the ball down the hill, and I’m hoping that it starts to roll.” While plot details are under wraps, Field is looking to next September as the desired start date.—Erik Luers