“Call Me Micky” Brings Transgender Visibility to Fire Island With Cherry Grove Premiere September 12

Documentary follows transgender advocate Micky Angelo Petrillo’s late-in-life transition, with comedian Ike Avelli, photographer Billy Hess, hairstylist Mark De Alwis, and Pose star Dominique Jackson joining the celebration….

“Call Me Micky,” the documentary chronicling transgender advocate Micky Angelo Petrillo’s journey into living authentically, will make its premiere on Fire Island this September, screening in Cherry Grove, one of the nation’s oldest and most storied LGBTQ+ communities.

The film follows Petrillo, a New Jersey native who began his transition at 59 after decades of feeling unable to live as himself. Previously developed under the working title “The Man I Was Born to Be,” the documentary has continued through the festival submission process while Petrillo has built a broader platform around his story, including his recently released memoir, Walking the Earth: First as a Woman, Then as a Man.

The Cherry Grove premiere brings together a lineup with deep roots in New York’s LGBTQ+ entertainment and media community. Gay comedian Ike Avelli, known for his stand-up and for the long-running web series “Shut Up and Drive,” appears in the film, as does celebrity photographer Billy Hess and celebrity hair and makeup designer Mark De Alwis, both fixtures of New York’s nightlife and red-carpet scene. The screening also welcomes Dominique Jackson, the actress and model whose portrayal of Elektra Abundance on FX’s “Pose” made her one of the most recognized transgender performers in American television.

For Petrillo, the film has always been about more than his own story. “Every life is a journey. Mine began one way, but I found the courage to become the person I always knew I was,” he has said of the project. That message finds a fitting home in Cherry Grove, a community that has offered refuge and celebration to generations of LGBTQ+ New Yorkers since the early twentieth century, and one where transgender visibility remains an ongoing and vital conversation.

Bringing “Call Me Micky” to Fire Island situates Petrillo’s personal journey within that larger community history, positioning the September 12 screening as both a film premiere and a gathering point for transgender visibility on one of the LGBTQ+ community’s most historic stages.

About Micky Angelo Petrillo: Micky Angelo Petrillo is a transgender advocate, author, and business owner from New Jersey. He began his gender transition at age 59, and has since shared his story through the documentary “Call Me Micky” and the memoir Walking the Earth: First as a Woman, Then as a Man, with the goal of encouraging visibility and understanding for the transgender community and those who love them.

We are the tapestry woven from whispers and courage,
born in the quiet spaces between who we are told to be
and the truth we carry in our bones.
We are a people of the threshold,
navigating the vast architecture of becoming.

Ours is a sacred geometry of revision.
We look at the canvas of the self and dare to redraw the lines,
translating the silent language of the soul
into the visible syntax of the flesh.
We do not change our nature;
we simply invite the world to finally see it.

We have known the cold wind of exile,
the heavy weight of names that did not fit,
and the fierce, quiet battle of the mirror.
Yet, from the fragments of expected lives,
we forge a profound and luminous belonging.

We are daughters who claimed our own grace,
sons who unearthed our own strength,
and travelers who map the beautiful country between the shores,
proving that gender is not a cage,
but a horizon.

In our joy, we are revolutionary.
In our grief, we are a fortress.
We stand as living proof that the most beautifulthing a human can do
is to look into the darkness of the unknown,
reach inside, and pull out their own light