Attacks on transgender people are rising so fast in the US that campaigners talk of an “epidemic” of violence. Victims are disproportionately Black or Latina – like Tina (Carlie Guevara), the sweet-natured Mexican trans woman at the centre of this New York indie. I was desperate for the movie to end happily but, from the opening scene, director Flavio Alves foreshadows the violence to come, beginning with a menacing closeup of a man’s face, nostrils flaring, mouth pinched with hate as he watches her walking home.

It’s not reasonable to ask that the film keeps Tina safe, but a sense from the start that things might end badly for her made me wince a little even during the lovely, authentic-feeling scenes of her life. Alves cast the film from within the trans community, and first-time actor Guevara’s performance as Tina has a radiant quality, soulful and touchingly gentle, though her line readings are a little stilted at times. Tina is an undocumented worker who has been in New York since the age of five. She lives with her elderly grandma, who can’t wrap her head around Tina’s identity (she still uses male pronouns); but their apartment is filled with love and food. Tina drives a cab and is saving up for gender reassignment. When a friend is attacked, she joins a grassroots Trans Lives Matter campaign.

Tina barely notices the stoned-looking long-haired loner working behind the counter at the local grocery shop, Chris (Anthony Abdo); he stares at her with a frightening mix of desire and disgust. I wasn’t absolutely sure if the film needed to spend so much time on his seething self-loathing: pumping weights, masturbating in the shower, humiliated by his macho semi-mates for being odd and unconfident. His destructive shame, for me, threatened to eclipse this moving realistic-feeling portrait of a woman building her life.

• The Garden Left Behind is released on 23 July on digital platforms.