SIFF 2026 Dispatch #3: Aberdeen-Born Actor/Director Mia Moore Puts a Lo-Fi, Queer Spin on Sci-Fi in Her Debut, Again Again

AGAIN AGAIN 

(Mia Moore and Heather Ballish, USA, 2026, 99 minutes) 

I've never seen myself truly represented on screen. I've never seen a trans woman who's allowed to go on a journey that's informed by her transness but not obsessed with her transness… The kind of film I needed when I was closeted and alone. The kind of film I needed when I didn't even know what I was.--Mia Moore in her Indiegogo pitch

Lilly Wachowski, most recently of 2021's The Matrix Resurrections, co-produced this crowd-funded sci-fi romantic drama about Agatha (co-director Mia Moore, who appeared in Vera Drew's The People's Joker), a punky, smalltown trans woman who was stuck in a time loop for 10 years. 

If Moore never pushes the central metaphor too hard, the time loop appears to represent time Agatha wasn't truly trans; time she wasn't fully herself.

When the loop comes to an end, however, she has no idea how to kickstart her life--or how to prevent something like it from happening again. She just knows she wants to spend it with petite Australian-born singer Tess (Aria Taylor), with whom she grew up in Moore's native Aberdeen, Washington–back when she knew she liked girls even if she hadn't transitioned yet. 

They love each other, but find it easier to be friends than lovers to the extent that Tess gets engaged to Jason (rising Seattle actor Jon Meggison), which pleases her judgmental mother (Nicole Spacek), who never liked Agatha. There also appears to be an unpoken class divide between the two. 

Granted, it's possible some of these things are in Agatha's head, since she's pretty confused, not so much about her trans identity, but about most everything else. A predilection for drinking whiskey and smoking pot isn't helping, though she doesn't have anyone or anything else to whom to turn, except for Tess. If the relationship between the women is well established, a few details about how they earn their keep would have been welcome.   

Moore and Taylor have plenty of chemistry, though Agatha's heart-to-heart with Naomi (British actress Abigail Thorn), a trans record store worker more settled in her life, provides the most affecting moment in the film. In the end, though, Again Again is no tragedy, and the ending suggests that Agatha may be ready to plunge full-bore into the future. 

After at least 12 years in Aberdeen, Mia Moore now calls Los Angeles home, but her first full-length feature is a local film through and through and will, ideally, encourage more trans stories rooted in the Pacific Northwest.

I'm not sure how Wachowski came aboard, but it may have something to do with a statement Moore made to Pink News in 2023: "I really respect queer indie cinema from the 1990s and 2000s, especially lesbian films, where it's like, they're lesbians but it's a heist movie." (Bound, anyone?) "Sometimes," she concludes, "we get to be goofy little critters stuck in a time loop."

Click here for SIFF 2026 Dispatch #1 and here for #2.

Again Again plays on Mon, May 11, at 6:30pm, Tues, May 12, at 3pm, and Fri, May 15, at 8pm. All at the Uptown. Mia Moore, Producer Cliff Noonan, and Exec Producer Ian Schrank scheduled to attend. Images from The Daily World (Mia Moore/Mia Moore Marchant) and SIFF (Moore and Aria Taylor).