The terrific and emotionally-powerful new feature docudrama, Gender Transformation: The Untold Realities examines the topic of transgenderism and youth, exploring the roles played by the education system, the medical and pharmaceutical industries, the financial interests behind the transgender movement, and the societal and political mechanisms at work.
Directed by Tobias Elvhage and Liza Morberg, the film explores the origin of transgenderism in youth and follows the journeys of several transgender young people and their families. The docudrama will reveal what actually happens to some youth who started the process to change their gender and the implications involved.
We get to see the real-life stories of several transgender youth and their experiences at various stages of their transition journeys, through live interviews and re-enactments. Experts interviewed and featured in the film include Dr. Michael Laidlaw, endocrinologist; Dr. Katherine Welch, physician; Dr. Miriam Grossman, author and public speaker; therapist and social worker Pamela Garfield; attorney Erin Friday; Kali Fontanilla, founder, Exodus Institute/teacher; Christy Lozano, teacher/United States Air Force veteran; author/activist Walt Heyer, founder of Sexchangeregret.com, investigative writer Jennifer Bilek, and others. Watch the trailer below:
REELated:
“I chose to direct and produce this film after watching a shorter investigative documentary made by Swedish Television called The Trans Children. Through this program, I got to understand how badly puberty blockers and cross-hormones can affect children. The more I investigated, the more I saw that this had become a sensitive and even political subject, and I wanted to understand the mechanisms behind it,” Tobias Elvhage comments.
Reel 360 News had a chance to speak more with Tobias more about his background and experiences.
What’s your origin story?
I grew up in a fairly big town in Sweden. My parents pushed me to be active in sports, for example, running orienteering in the forest early mornings on Saturdays and Sundays. I remember I was sometimes jealous of others who could just stay at home and sleep, but looking back now I think it gave me a quite good foundation for life.
How did you get into the film industry?
When I was 18 years old, I was in China to teach and introduce orienteering at different universities. I remember seeing a lot of people meditating early in the mornings, young and old together, and it looked very peaceful. Some years later, I came back and at this time one of the most popular meditation methods called Falun Gong had become forbidden to practice, even persecuted by the regime, and no one seemed to want to talk about it.
I realized that the Communist party in China had put out a lot of untruthful stories and propaganda to scare people. I then understood there is a big need for independent media and truthful stories that can help us see through the different interests in this world and how they work.
Who were your mentors?
Honestly, I haven’t had many mentors, so I guess my learning curve hasn’t been that steep, instead I’ve had to learn from my mistakes and from some of my friends who had more experience in the field. Lately, I’ve been to some good workshops with Bob Dolman, writer and producer, who is mostly known for Willow and Far and Away.
While there will be others, what do you consider your biggest achievement to date?
I would say that the series Divine Messengers has been the most fulfilling project in my life so far. I was able to get into reality an idea I had for a long time, that meant a lot to me. We had great people, both actors and technical staff on board, and the experts we interviewed were also interesting and good storytellers.
Even if there was certainly room for improvement, I always had the feeling that I was able to fulfill what I wanted to achieve in terms of story and art with a deeper meaning to them.
What drives you in your work?
I think it has to do with the process I just described with creating stories and art with a deeper meaning, something that touches people and makes you think or put things into perspective.
What is the biggest challenge for you in your industry today?
I would say there is not one ”big challenge.” Instead. every film or TV series project comes with its specific challenges. Sometimes I feel there is need for more time, and sometimes there is need for more budget, but I think these restraints also push me to really work my best according to the circumstances.
Coffee, Lunch or Happy Hour. Who are you going with?
Coffee – J.K. Rowling, she has an interesting life story and she is courageous
Lunch – Mel Gibson, I want to know more about how he manages to create so emotional stories
Happy Hour – Clint Eastwood, I would like to see how he manages to stay so calm when he is directing movies
Tell us about your latest documentary project – ‘Gender Transformation -The Untold Realities.’
Last year I started to do a lot of research on the topic of transgenderism, and some months after I started doing interviews with people and different experts in the United States. The more stories I heard, the more I thought – why didn’t I know about this before? It felt like I only had heard one side of the story, and suddenly there were mothers of teenagers that had their whole life destroyed because of this ideology.
I came across a woman, Abigail Martinez, who had lost custody of one of her young daughters because she didn’t agree on her daughter’s decision to suddenly change gender. The whole team felt it was such a heart-gripping story and we decided to make it into a docudrama, following Abigail and her daughter. At the same time, we had experts and people who’ve regretted their sex change speak out to give a picture of how and why this is happening, and also who is profiting from this.
For the drama parts, we managed to get some great talents together both in the technical side, as well as the actors. The docudrama got accepted to the Manhattan Film Festival where it will be shown for the first time publicly on the 16th of June.
What inspired you to direct this project?
In October 2022, I was asked by The Epoch Times if I would like to help produce a documentary on the topic of transgenderism. I’ve had a good collaboration with The Epoch Times in the past, and love their programming which is very balanced, to the point.
At first, I was a bit hesitant about the topic itself, but then I saw an investigative reportage by Swedish Television about the severe side effects of puberty blockers and cross sex hormones, which are given to the young people of today in order for them to start changing to the opposite sex.
After watching, I felt that it’s a very important matter that is in need of exploration – how can children be influenced to destroy their bodies and become sterile?
Gender Transformation: The Untold Realities by directors Tobias Elvhage and Liza Morberg will debut to worldwide audiences on EpochTV on June 19. The film will also have its theatrical premiere at the Manhattan Film Festival in New York City at 7 p.m. (EST) on June 16.
Colin Costello is the West Coast Editor of Reel 360. Contact him at colin@reel360.com or follow him on Twitter at @colinthewriter1
