Transformer

Janae Marie Kroczaleski is a former Marine and a world-record-holding powerlifter. In the summer of 2015 she was publicly outed as transgender without her consent. Her sponsors withdrew, she was barred from competing and her relationship with her family broke down. The documentary follows the period after that: Janae has to think at the same time about the body she spent years building and about how she defines herself. There is no easy answer at the centre of the film. Janae describes herself as a trans woman and also as standing in a fluid, non-binary place; she talks about feeling more feminine on some days and more masculine on others. The documentary does not present this as a contradiction, it records it as it is. Michael Del Monte keeps the camera close, and Janae's relationship with her sons is the most affecting line in the account. The film won the audience award at Hot Docs in 2018.