“You turn the simplest things into a problem. It’s getting really poor. «Two sentences from a film that currently apply to several events from the streaming world and which summarize for me what it is ailing in our society. A few days ago the actor Elliot Page (known from »Juno« and »Umbrella Academy«) came out on Instagram as trans and published a moving letter in which he is not only happy about the love for his authentic self and his companions from the trans community, but also denounces politicians who deny the existence of trans people and incite violence against them. “You have blood on your hands,” he writes. In a Facebook group that poses as feminist, trans-hostile comments about Pages Outing appear. Similar statements can be found about the film mentioned at the beginning, which can currently be streamed in the Arte media library.
“A Girl” (Original: “Petite Fille”) is a French documentary that portrays a family struggling to have their daughter accepted for who she is. She cannot identify with the gender (male / boy) assigned at her birth. She is a girl. However, Sascha’s environment constantly causes her problems. At school she is not allowed to be referred to with the pronoun “she” and she is also told what to wear when it comes to clothes: Pants are okay, clothes are not. Filmed very calmly and gently, the film accompanies Sascha and her family for a year. We get an insight into some of the adversities that people who do not identify as cis are exposed to in our society. (“Cis” refers to those who identify with the gender assigned to them at birth. “Cis” is the Latin prefix for “on this side, this side, inside, within”.)
With his film, Sébastien Lifshitz would like to »help us understand what transidentity means«, he says in an interview. »A Girl« is a film made by cis-people for cis-people about the absurd problem constructions of cis-people. The focus of the film is not on Sascha’s experience, but on her environment. Those who support them with all their might, like their families, and those who discriminate against, attack and negate them.
The film shows what is built around the protagonist, while Sascha just wants to be herself. It is absurd how many people are involved in this intimate matter of Sascha’s own identity and how much time and energy they invest in making life difficult for a girl. The family has to travel to Paris from the small province of Laon in northern France to obtain a medical certificate that proves something that Sascha has been aware of since she was three. Her mother is always on the phone to make new appointments with parents, teachers, and the principal.
The film shows us how poor it is to problematize situations that are very easy to solve (i.e. Sascha is a girl and lives as such) and thereby denying people their dignity, robbing them of energy, putting them in danger bring.
And Sascha? At times, despite skeptical looks at the camera, she drops her protective wall. Then we see in close-up how her face burns up painfully and tears roll down her cheeks. Sascha can rarely find words. The camera is still watching them closely. Her immediate environment, her family, on the other hand, finds surprisingly clear words. Like her father, who is standing in the kitchen with a frown and formulates these two sentences that have such a lasting effect on me. There is a lot of talk about Sascha. It’s not really about Sascha himself. It’s about the fact that the story of a young girl of eight years has to serve to explain to us cis-people what it is like to live and grow up as a transperson in our society. Although the film, as a cis woman, moves me incredibly and moves me with it, I can’t help but wonder how Sascha will think of this film in ten or 20 years and how we have observed ourselves through her mediation to ourselves understand.
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