State of Firsts
The documentary that refuses to make history comfortable
State of Firsts is a 2026 documentary that puts you inside Sarah McBride's first year as the first openly transgender person elected to the U.S. Congress — and it doesn't frame that history as a clean victory. McBride won her Delaware seat in November 2024. On day one, MAGA Republicans moved to ban her from congressional restrooms and misgendered her publicly, repeatedly, on the record. The film doesn't linger on those moments as spectacle. Instead, it tracks what McBride chose to do in response: constituent work, real legislation, real people. That tension — between the noise aimed at her and the actual grinding business of governance she refused to abandon — is what gives this documentary its spine.
It's a film about showing up. Ninety-three minutes. No retrospective safety net.
Why Chase Joynt wasn't the obvious choice — and why that matters
Director Chase Joynt has a track record of formal risk-taking. His previous feature, Framing Agnes (2022), reconstructed forgotten trans case studies from the 1950s using contemporary actors — a structurally strange, emotionally precise piece that won the Teddy Award at Berlin in 2023. That background signals something important here: Joynt doesn't approach State of Firsts as standard campaign documentation. He's not just following a subject around with a camera. Rachel Lears, whose own work includes the labor-organizing documentary Knock Down the House (2019), wrote the screenplay. That pairing tells you there's a structural argument built into this film, not just access.
What's striking is that Joynt made this without knowing how it ends. McBride is still in office, still mid-story, and the film was shot in real time rather than assembled in retrospect. That's a genuine risk for documentary filmmaking, and it's also what makes the film feel alive rather than archival. Most political documentaries wait until there's a resolution. This one doesn't.
The production trio — Level Ground Productions, Optimist, and XTR — represents the kind of mid-budget independent infrastructure that festival programmers actually take seriously. XTR in particular has backed a string of politically engaged documentaries that punch above their budget weight.
Festival run and critical response so far
State of Firsts premiered at Tribeca on June 11, 2025, and has since played a solid circuit: DC/DOX 2025, Palm Springs International Film Festival in early 2026, the Athena Film Festival, and Sonoma International Film Festival. Special curated screenings at venues like the Alamo Drafthouse have kept it visible between festival stops.
The Columbia Spectator review from the Athena screening noted how Joynt foregrounds McBride's vulnerability alongside her historic status — a harder balance than it sounds. Most political documentaries tip one way: hagiography or takedown. This one does neither. I keep coming back to that choice: the film is interested in what it costs to stay focused on the job when the job itself has become a political flashpoint (and when that flashpoint is aimed directly at you).
What makes it work is access. There's a scene early on where McBride is doing the kind of constituent meeting that never makes cable news — small room, real problem, no cameras except Joynt's crew — and it lands harder than any of the floor-of-Congress footage because that's where the stakes actually live for the people she represents.
McBridge herself has spoken about drawing on historical figures who faced systemic opposition, a framing that lifts the film beyond a single news cycle without losing sight of the very specific attacks she's navigating right now. It's careful work, and critics and festival programmers have responded to it.
Where to watch and when
No wide theatrical or streaming deal has been formally announced yet. Documentary distribution typically gets announced in spring windows, and Movie OTT tracks confirmed streaming and theatrical releases the moment they go live — if you bookmark that page, you won't miss it when State of Firsts lands.
The film spent most of 2025 in festival-only circulation. That's changing. A general audience release was expected sometime in 2026, which means checking Movie OTT's where-to-watch widget in the coming months is your best move — it aggregates confirmed streaming availability across all major platforms so you don't have to check each one manually.
There's no MPAA rating confirmed yet and no Rotten Tomatoes aggregate, which is standard for documentaries still in festival circulation.
Should you watch State of Firsts?
Yes — if you care about political documentaries that don't flatten their subjects into symbols. It's not a celebration and it's not an attack. It's a portrait of someone choosing to work under conditions designed to make that work impossible. Joynt's track record suggests he won't let it be easy or comfortable, and that's exactly the right instinct for this material.
Hard to say when it'll be on every platform. But when it lands, State of Firsts looks set to be one of the more substantive political films of 2026. Keep Movie OTT bookmarked — the moment that distribution deal closes, the details will be there.