Tangerine - Film at The Share Centre

Venue: The Share Centre | 88 Stow Hill, Newport, NP20 4DW
Date: 04/09/2026
Doors: 18:00 Close: 22:00
Entry: Free

Sean Baker’s Tangerine (2015) follows Sin-Dee Rella, a transgender sex worker who has just returned to her Los Angeles neighbourhood on Christmas Eve. When her best friend Alexandra reveals that Sin-Dee’s boyfriend and pimp, Chester, has been unfaithful, Sin-Dee sets off across the city to find him and the woman involved.

What begins as a fast-moving search becomes a funny, energetic and emotionally complex portrait of friendship, betrayal and survival. Sin-Dee and Alexandra may argue, compete and frustrate one another, but their relationship provides the film’s emotional centre. Beneath its outrageous humour and relentless momentum is a tender story about two women supporting each other in a world that frequently treats them with hostility or indifference.

The film places transgender women, sex workers and other people often pushed to the margins firmly at the centre of the screen. Rather than presenting its characters only through suffering, Tangerine allows them to be contradictory, joyful, angry, vulnerable and fully alive.

The film is also celebrated for the way it was made. Baker and his collaborators filmed it using three iPhone 5s phones, transforming limited resources into bold, saturated and strikingly cinematic images. Its production demonstrates that powerful filmmaking does not always depend on expensive equipment: strong characters, collaboration, imagination and an understanding of place can be equally important.

At once a comedy, a friendship story and a vivid portrait of Los Angeles, Tangerine invites conversation about representation, loyalty, discrimination and who is allowed to occupy the centre of a cinematic story.

The screening will be followed by an informal audience conversation about the film, its characters and the creative possibilities of making films with accessible technology.

TANGERINE
Directed by Sean Baker
USA, 2015 | Approximately 88 minutes | Certificate 15
English

Age rating: 15 (BBFC). No one under the age of 15 may attend. The BBFC advises that the film contains strong language, sex, sex references and drug misuse.

Please note: The film contains strong and discriminatory language, sexual content and nudity, references to sex work, drug use and scenes of moderate threat.

Official Tangerine trailer from Magnolia Pictures:

In this interview, Sean Baker discusses filming on iPhones, working collaboratively with first-time performers, researching the characters’ community and finding creative solutions within a very limited budget:

Explore how the film was made