The Secret of Me

The Secret of Me 💖, dir. Grace Hughes-Hallett, 2025, UK, 80 min.
⚠️ content advisory: themes of abuse
Monday, June 23, 2025, 5:45 pm Roxie Theater
🏆 winner: 2025 Frameline “In the Silence” Award

The Secret of Me

If you’re reading this blog, I figure you probably already know what “intersex” means, but, just in case, it refers to any person whose body is not unambiguously either male or female. That includes chromosomal and hormonal variations, as well as other anatomical variations. Historically, many people born with intersex conditions have been shoe-horned into one or the other binary gender as infants, long before they have any say in the matter. Worse yet, they are often raised in ignorance and/or shame of the true nature of their situation.

The Secret of Me focuses primarily on Jim Ambrose, who didn’t know until he got his medical records in college that his gender had been reassigned at birth, and everything his parents had told him was a lie. As Jim delves deeper into the subject, he comes across the stories of Dr. John Money and his horrifying abuse of some of his patients, most famously David Reimer, who Money claimed had embraced his assigned female gender when that was very much not the case.

Jim Ambrose saw an article in Rolling Stone about Reimer, the first person to be publicly visible as a victim of Dr. Money; that led Jim to contact ISNA, the Intersex Society of North America, and started his activism. We see Jim return to the neighborhood where he grew up and confront some of the people from his childhood. It’s a solid presentation of Jim’s story and some of the background behind it, never sensationalized, mostly told by Jim and other people with intersex conditions themselves, underlining the case that involuntary infant sex reassignment is neither effective nor ethical.

It’s a must see for everyone, and even moreso if you or a loved one are intersex.

• IMDb • trailer • official website • 2023 intersex documentary Every Body (Frameline47), not reviewed here but very much worth seeing •

Who I Am Not

Who I Am Not, dir. Tünde Skovrán, 2023, Romania/‌Canada/‌South Africa/‌Germany/‌USA, 105 min., in English, Sepedi, Xhosa, Setswana, and isiZulu, with subtitles 💖
Wednesday, June 21, 3:00 pm, Castro + streaming encore
Winner: best documentary feature (Frameline47 audience award)

Who I Am Not

This documentary gets up close and personal with two intersex people in South Africa as they wrestle with who they are (and who they are not), their place in the world, the medical interventions that were made when they were newborns, and the way forward for them, coming to terms with their own situation and hoping to improve life for intersex people being born today. It’s a powerful moment of visibility for a part of the community that often gets left out even from the acronym LGBTQ. Definitely a MUST SEE.

• IMDb page • Variety article • trailer • Facebook: @WhoIAmNotDocumetary [note spelling] • Instagram: @WhoIAmNotDocumentary •

Ni d’Ève ni d’Adam (No Box for Me: An Intersex Story)

Ni d’Ève ni d’Adam. Une histoire intersexe (No Box for Me. An Intersex Story), dir. Floriane Devigne, 2018, France/Switzerland, 58m, in French with English subtitles 💖
Saturday, June 22, 11:00 am, Roxie Theater • Bay Area première •

Ni d’Ève ni d’Adam.
Une histoire intersexe
(No Box for Me.
An Intersex Story)

Imagine that from the very moment of your birth your life faced a fork in the road. The doctors looked at your new­born body, and could not easily say “boy“ or “girl”: on the check­list of phys­io­log­ical sex markers, there may have been check marks in both columns, or some characteristics that fell into a gray area. The doctors picked the sex they thought was closer and took surgical steps to affirm their selection, setting your life irrevers­ibly off down one fork or the other. Yes, it is true that most people are not inter­sex — most people are either cis­women, cis­men, trans­women, or trans­men — but on a global scale people with an inter­sex con­di­tion are about as common as people with red hair.

👩‍🦰👨‍🦰

Ni d’Ève ni d’Adam (No Box for Me) follows one intersex person as they seek to under­stand more about intersex conditions and how they have been treated by the med­i­cal estab­lish­ment, as well as what should be considered best practices in the future. They study the lit­er­a­ture and talk to doctors and to other people with intersex conditions (including the anonymous person whose images are blanked out as in the photo above), and we sit with them while they come out to their younger sister. On every level from schol­arly academia to deeply personal and subjective, we get a glimpse into the nuances of navigating life as an intersex person and working to make life better for sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions, making this documentary truly a MUST SEE.

• IMDb [placeholder page] • trailer (vimeo) • official website (en français) • note: the full film is available on vimeo VOD, but not in the U.S. •

Ponyboi

Screened with the short film Ponyboi, which was not avail­able for advance screening. Synopsis: Writer and co-director River Gallo stars as the titular Ponyboi, an intersex sex worker in New Jersey looking for an escape. Will an encounter with a hunky daddy (Keith Allan, Z Nation) be Pony­boi’s ticket out of Jersey?

Ponyboi, directors: River Gallo & Sadé Clacken Joseph, 2019, USA, 19m • IMDb • official: PonyboiTheFilm.com • trailer (YouTube) • Bay Area première •

Up Close & Personal (2018 shorts program)

Up Close & Personal” (2018 shorts program)
Friday, June 22, 1:30 p.m. Castro

1. Note to Self, dir. Alex Bohs, 2017 USA, 2 minutes 👍
2. What Do You See, dir. Michael Bonner, 2017 Australia, 6 minutes 👏 WORLD PREMIERE
3. 98 Years* and Counting: More Women Leaders Needed Everywhere, dir. Kirthi Nath, 2018 USA, 3 minutes 👏
4. My Own Wings, dir. Katia Repina, 2016 Spain/USA, 9 minutes, in English, Spanish, French and Ukrainian with English subtitles throughout 👏 BAY AREA PREMIERE
5. The Things that Make Us, dir. Fox Fisher, 2017 UK, 3 minutes 💖 WORLD PREMIERE
6. Many Loves, One Heart, dir. Sarah Feinbloom, 2017 USA/Jamaica, 19 minutes (also screened in the “Realness & Revelations” shorts program) 👏 WORLD PREMIERE
   
7. Angela Wilson: A Butcher’s Story, dir. Gaby Scott, 2018 USA, 7 minutes 👏 U.S. PREMIERE
8. Picture This, dir. Jari Osborne, 2017 Canada, 33 minutes 💖

Spork

Spork contemplating a spork.

Spork, dir. J. B. Ghuman, Jr., 2010 USA, 90 min. 
Sun. 6/19, 1:00 @ Castro, SPOR19C

“Spork” (Savannah Stehlin) is the nickname given to a girl-identified 13-year-old with an intersex condition. (She views herself as something of a hybrid, hence the name.) Her classmates mostly view her as a freak and an outcast, as much for her frizzy hair as for her unusual biology. With help from some of her friends, including the irrepressible neighbor girl Tootsie Roll (Sydney Park), Spork decides to enter the dance competition in hopes of winning the $236 prize in spite of her lack of rhythm and graceful moves.

XXY

We start with a fairly typical family, Mom, Dad, and 15-year-old daughter Alex. Another family comes to visit, bringing their slightly older son Álvaro. (Alex's mother doesn't mention that she invited Álvaro's father specifically because he is a plastic surgeon.) Alex and Álvaro haltingly approach each other, carefully testing each other's trustworthiness. Alex, though, has a secret: she has an intersex condition, in this case resulting from having XXY sex chromosomes instead of the more common XX or XY, resulting in a condition called Klinefelter syndrome. In the vast majority of cases, the parents whose child is born with an intersex condition are pressured to surgically and hormonally alter the child to choose "male" or "female." Alex's parents resisted the pressure, deciding to let Alex make the choice of one surgery, the other, or neither. Álvaro, of course, has a few secrets of his own, which complicate his interactions with Alex and her friends and add a poignant dimension to his relationship with his father. The situations of both teens are handled with sensitivity and depth, making a real winner of a film. MUST SEE.

XXY, dir.

Technorati tags: XXY, InsideOut, Toronto, LGBT Film