There is a particular kind of courage in asking the world to use your name. For Micky Angelo Petrillo, that request has become the title of a film. CALL ME MICKY, a 22-minute documentary short about the larger-than-life New Jersey native who transitioned at 59, has spent September traveling the festival circuit, and everywhere it lands, audiences are meeting a man who waited decades to live as himself and has no intention of doing it quietly.
Micky’s own tagline says it best: “It’s never too late to become yourself!” Now in his sixties, he is making up for lost time. The film does not treat his transition as the finish line of his story. Instead, it asks the question so many trans people know intimately and so few films bother to explore: what happens after? What does it look like to finally step into your life, fully and openly, when most people your age are settling into the lives they have already built? For Micky, the answer is Pride celebrations, open mics, storytelling, laughter with longtime friends and an ever more public embrace of the man he always was.
That openness is the heart of the film, and it came at a cost. Telling his story authentically has meant being completely vulnerable on camera, in a political climate that too often meets trans lives with hostility or indifference. Micky has faced heartbreak and a financial blow that could easily have ended the project. He kept going, and more than 100 early supporters rallied behind him to help bring the film to life. He has been clear that this story is bigger than one man. It is for every trans person who deserves to be seen, heard and respected.
Behind the camera, Micky found a partner who believed in him from the start. The film is directed by his friend Andrew Rasmussen, co-founder of CARDINAL, the New York City creative production company that produced it, with Rasmussen, Stacey O’Reilly and Micky himself serving as producers. The executive producer is Dominique Jackson, internationally celebrated for her commanding portrayal of Elektra on FX’s groundbreaking series POSE and a powerful voice for transgender visibility. Jackson, who also executive produced the Tribeca Festival documentary I’M YOUR VENUS, appears in CALL ME MICKY as well, sitting down with Micky for an intimate conversation about identity, visibility and what it truly means to live openly as yourself. Friends including Jackson Sturkey, Ike Avelli, Wendy Stuart and Billy Hess also appear on screen.
Audiences got their first taste of the project well before the festival run. A sneak preview premiered at Ike Avelli’s holiday variety show at New York City’s famed Copacabana, and a preview screening in Jersey City packed the theater. Those early crowds were a sign of what was coming.
This September, CALL ME MICKY began its festival journey in earnest. On September 11, it screened at the Susquehanna LGBTQ Film Festival at Midtown Cinema in central Pennsylvania. The very next day brought a double celebration: a screening at the Fire Island NY Transgender Film Festival at the Cherry Grove Theater, a fitting home for a story about trans joy, and a hometown-state showing at the 11th annual Newark International Film Festival at Cityplex 12 in Newark. On September 19, the film traveled cross-country as an Official Selection of Reel Pride Fresno, screening at the historic Tower Theater. From a New Jersey theater to a California stage, Micky’s story is finding its audience, and that audience is growing.
The film is only one chapter of a much larger story. Micky is also the author of the memoir Walking the Earth: First as a Woman, Then a Man, and through his broader platform, The Man I Was Born to Be, he speaks at panels, conferences and community events about his transition, the making of the documentary and why trans visibility matters more now than ever. He brings to every room the same things he brings to the screen: humor, radical honesty and a refusal to shrink.
For trans viewers, especially those who came to themselves later in life, CALL ME MICKY offers something rare and precious: proof that there is no deadline on authenticity, and that joy is waiting on the other side of the door. For everyone else, it offers an invitation to meet a funny, warm, outspoken man on his own terms. All he asks is the simplest thing in the world. Call him Micky.
For more information https://www.callmemickyfilm.com
