Many of us assume that there are only two genders and that being female or male follows from the sex of our biological bodies. Focusing on the art, photography and performances of four "alternative" gender artists Assume Nothing poses the questions: "What if "male" and "female" are not the only options?
How can you live with a gender that was decided for you, operated since birth to conform to norms? M would like to break free and begins for the first time a correspondence with 25 years-old Deborah, also born intersex. Through their letters and encounters, Deborah and M share their experiences.
Alex is intersex. Although he has XY chromosomes, his sex is ambiguous. When Alex was an infant, his mother authorised genital reassignment surgery, and he was thereafter raised female. Now Alex is an adult, and he is consumed by feelings of anger and loss. After meeting other "XY women" and doing a lot of soul-searching, he decides he wants to live as a man.
Sharon-Rose Khumalo, a South African beauty queen, faces an identity crisis after discovering she's intersex. Her path crosses with Dimakatso Sebidi, a masculine-presenting intersex activist, as they both navigate a journey marked by society’s stigma and inner struggles. Intertwining raw reality with poetic beauty, Who I am Not captures the heart-wrenching fight for acceptance in a binary world.
Three intersex individuals overcame shame, secrecy and unauthorized surgery throughout their childhoods to enjoy successful adulthoods, choosing to ignore medical advice to conceal their bodies and coming out as who they truly are.
When his family tries to kill him, Sidney, who is intersex, flees to Nairobi where he meets a group of transgender friends. Together, they fight discrimination and discover life, love and self-worth.
At birth, every parent expects the famous announcement: “It’s a girl!” or “It’s a boy!”. And if, instead, the doctors declared :”We don’t know“? Through the history of Gabriel, Sophie, Justin and their families, we discover the taboo of intersexuality, formerly called”hermaphrodite”.
The fourth generation in his family to be born intersex, Jewish Rabbi Levi was assigned the female gender at birth and grew up thinking he was sick and defective. "In the Image of God" tells the story of his struggles and transitions, culminating today in a life as a religious leader and an LGBTQI+ activist living happily in Los Angeles with his wife.
Along the roads of Australia travels a small film crew headed by filmmaker Phoebe Hart, who is determined to turn this on-the-road trip into a journey of self-discovery. Her hermaphroditism played a painful and significant role in her past: she has had to deal with it from her adolescence on, but now this conflict has happily been solved. Even her relationship with her parents was damaged by her condition: in her opinion they were to blame for having forced her to undergo a traumatic operation to remove her internal testicles. Along the road, she will connect with other intersex people, ready to open up to her about their common condition. Will Phoebe succeed in openly confronting her mother, who is reluctant to be interviewed, and to talk about an issue that is so important for her? Will she find the answers she is looking for? A journey of self-discovery that is difficult, but at the same time light, ironic and detached.
Pidgeon Pagonis, a lead activist and educator from the intersex community, crusades for body autonomy and the freedom to choose one’s own path.
Explores intersex identity through beautifully shot interviews about family, pressures from the medical industry, and societal standards that dictate what is commonly accepted as a male or female body.
A movie about intersexuality
Bonnie is on the run again. He has been on the run from his family and sports fraternity since failing a 'sex test' before the Bangkok Asian Games in 1998. Born intersex, raised by poor, illiterate and confused parents as a girl named 'Bandana', s/he became one of the finest strikers of Indian Woman's football team in her/his short career. A sex reassignment surgery later transformed her/him to a man but left him without a home or a career. He left home, took up idol-making for a living.He met Swati, married soon but moved once again fearing social backlash. His fight to establish his identity, struggle for existence met by a sarcastic society yet to learn to take 'other genders' seriously.
Earlene arrives at Venice Beach after running away from an estranged lover, only to become fast friends with an Australian skater who is also lost. Together, they set out into the desert to find themselves.
Quite a bit can happen over the course of a single day in L.A., and when smooth-talking scam artist Johnny decides to throw a bachelor party for his best friend Bill the events of the day take a bizarre turn. As the festivities get underway, the appearance of a transvestite prostitute, a trigger-happy ex-con, and a notorious porn king signal that this isn't going to be a typical night out.
Alex, an intersexed 15-year-old, is living as a girl, but she and her family begin to wonder whether she's emotionally a boy when another teenager's sexual advances bring the issue to a head. As Alex faces a final decision regarding her gender, she meets both hostility and compassion.
A Man's Girlhood examines in comic form the conundrums of intersexuality. Depicts the memories of the author, published in 1907 as an anonymous biography under the pseudonym NOBody, but was, following the taste of the time, dramatically oversubscribed. A child born without a clear gender is raised by the father as a boy, later by the uncle as a girl and dissected after death.
In the hilltops of Burundi, a group of escaped coltan miners form an anti-colonialist computer hacker collective. From their camp in an otherworldly e-waste dump, they attempt a takeover of the authoritarian regime exploiting the region's natural resources – and its people. When an intersex runaway and an escaped coltan miner find each other through cosmic forces, their connection sparks glitches within the greater divine circuitry.
Sora and Umi (both played by Lee Tae-kyung) who were born to a Japanese father and a Korean mother and raised in South Korea. Sora now lives in Shanghai and works as an illustrator. When she meets a Japanese guy named Mochizuki, they become close. This is when her sibling Umi visits. Umi was born inter-sex and had undergone gender reassignment surgery to become a woman. Umi encourages Sora and Mochizuki to fall in love, but Sora becomes mentally unstable.
OPEN is a hallucinogenic journey through gender, identity, the body, love and how those can be shared by two people. The film consists of interlocking stories lines- the first about two trans women in a pandrogynous relationship in which they simultaneously receive plastic surgery treatments to mirror each other's features to ideally form into a single person. The second story follows a trans man and his new (cisgender) boyfriend as they run away from home and push against their own personal boundaries while dealing with his unexpected pregnancy.