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This beautifully crafted, poetic documentary joins brave young people as they seek to re-appropriate their bodies and explore their identities, revealing both the limits of binary visions of sex and gender, and the irreversible physical and psychological impact of non-consensual surgeries on intersex infants.

Synopsis

 

Deborah, 25, and M, 27, are living in bodies that Western medicine—and often society—deems too taboo to discuss publicly. Like an estimated 1.7 percent of people, they were born with variations in their sex characteristics that were different from classical understandings of male or female. For M, growing up intersex has also meant grappling with the fact that she underwent medically unnecessary surgeries to “normalize” her body as a very young child. But when M finds Deborah online, she is introduced to new voices, language, and representations that allow her to expand her understanding of who she is, beyond medical terms. This beautifully crafted, poetic documentary joins brave young people as they seek to reappropriate their bodies and explore their identities, revealing both the limits of binary visions of sex and gender, and the irreversible physical and psychological impact of non-consensual surgeries on intersex infants. 

“No Box for Me. An Intersex Story is a gem. It is engaging and smart, and treads lightly too, which makes it all the more powerful.”
- Graeme Reid, Director, LGBT Division, Human Rights Watch

To learn more on this topic visit HRW.org

Credits

Floriane Devigne

Floriane Devigne was born in Lausanne, in Switzerland. She studied both at the INSAS and at the Fémis film school in Paris. Soon after she directed Les Mots Claire which was selected at the festival Traces de Vies in Clermont Ferrand (France) and La Boit à Tartines which was awarded in many festivals such as DOK Leizig, RIDM (Montréal). Her film feature film La Clé de la Chambre à Lessive, co-directed with Fred Florey, won the SSR-SRG prize at the Vision du Réel festival and the diversity prize at Traces de Vies among others. It also was selected to more than 20 festivals such as Busan International Film Festival in South Korea, Doc Buenos Aires (Argentine) and at the RIDM Montréal. Then she directed Dayana Mini Market for the TV channel Arte. The got the SCAM award in 2014 and was also awarded at the festival Filmer le travail (Poitier, France). She has also directed several short films for Arte and France 2.