The director of the film ''Coming Out Story'' hopes his documentary about a person born with gender identity disorder will be helped to live easier lives. Director Kei Umezawa, 32, focuses on the life of Itsuki Dohi, 49, a high school teacher in Kyoto Prefecture with a profound sense of uneasiness about her original sex since birth as a man, and her search for selfhood before and after choosing to undergo an operation to be a woman.
The film was produced as Umezawa's graduation work at Japan Academy of Moving Images and won a prize bearing the name of the academy's founder, the late film director Shohei Imamura. In the film, Umezawa and some other film production staff recalled their own confusions about gender and confess them during the documentary. ''Everyone hopes to live life a little easier, what it means to live as what we are. I hope young people who find it hard to live will watch it,'' Umezawa said. The film has been screened at a theater in Tokyo's Shimokitazawa area and will be shown in Osaka.
Published on Thursday, 16 February 2012
