About the Film
I often tell audiences, “We don’t know what we don’t know.”
In 2020 my 41-year-old niece, Iden, came out as a transgender woman. I realized then that “what I didn’t know I didn’t know” was anything about what it meant to be transgendered. I wanted to know. I wanted to learn.
Iden’s story may be the most profound and personal I’ve been honored to tell as a documentary filmmaker. She agreed to let me follow her through her male to female transition. I listened. I observed. I learned.
I began this project thinking it would simply be a documentary about the joys and hardships that accompany transitioning. But transgendered people are much more than their gender. This film is about much more than gender. IDEN is the story of a parent and a spouse navigating a changing relationship. It is a story about self-discovery. It is a story of loss and love, of death and rebirth. It is a story that will take you through the dark places of the mind to discover the beauty of the soul.
Iden says, “That’s what we’re missing in the world. Everybody’s so afraid of each other. We just need one person to put down their shield and open up and to show that it can be done, that we don’t have to posture anymore. We don’t have to hide. We can all be honest and vulnerable. We can all just be the person that we are because that’s beautiful and rewarding. All of us deserve to have a beautiful and rewarding life.”
I hope Iden’s journey will help change the way that the world views the trans/non-binary/gender/queer community. This is not about going from Gender A to Gender B. It is about taking a raw and uniquely intimate journey from Not Self to Self.
Join us on that journey, as Iden inspires and empowers us to share ourselves with the same vulnerability and honesty that she does.
