Junmi Chen is a visionary LGBTQ+ activist and documentary filmmaker from China, now based in the United States. Their work artfully bridges storytelling and social justice, shedding light on marginalized voices and catalyzing systemic change. As a filmmaker, Junmi intertwines compelling narratives with their advocacy, using the power of film to inspire awareness and action. Their work continues to impact communities worldwide, championing human rights and equality.

 is a queer activist, filmmaker, and Consultant for the UNDP “Being LGBT in Asia” project. With a background in fine arts and a deep commitment to LGBTQ rights, he has worked extensively as a director, producer, and videographer, creating impactful content addressing issues such as LGBTQ rights, disability, feminism, and social justice. After graduating from the Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts in 2019, Gao co-directed the acclaimed documentary ““, which highlights the dangers of conversion therapy based on gender identity and sexual orientation and was nominated for the 2022 Chinese Documentary New Directors (CDND).

Their documentary focuses on transgender girl Huang Xiaodi and the majority of the movie presents an interview of her and her mother, narrating her life story from their two perspectives. Xiaodi faced issues due to her gender fluidity since she was a kid, within the school environment and in her community, while her parents were not exactly understanding, feeling ashamed for their child and essentially searching for a way to cure her from what they perceived as an ailment that prevented her from being an actual boy. When she was 17, her whole family gathered to celebrate her birthday. After dinner, her parents asked her to get in the car and take her to buy a birthday present. However, what awaited her was not the store, but the Lishi Information Engineering School on Gele Mountain in Chongqing, where they believed she would become normal again. While there, Xiaodi suffered intense hazing and various forms of violence, until, one day, she managed to escape although not for long.

The documentary, although stripped from any kind of beautification (fitting music for example) is shocking on a number of levels. The tortured life Xiaodi has been living since childhood is definitely the main source, but it is not the only. Nevertheless, the treatment she had from her parents, school and overall environment and her desperate but failed effort to go to Thailand, undergo sex change operation and get a new ID that will allow her to live as a woman is just the beginning. What she went through in the ‘Engineering School’, particularly in the hands of Lao Zhang, her main torturer, and her desperate effort to escape from the school, the police and her parents, a number of times actually, emerges as even more shocking. Even more so since her parents were always eager to return her there, or even when her stay there was impossible, to other similar schools.

Essentially, the most shattering aspect of the whole documentary is the attitude of her mother, who is the second ‘protagonist’ of the documentary. The fact that she has no clue what was happening to her daughter all through her school and the ‘conversion’ schools they sent her highlights her ignorance, making what is being shown on screen all the more painful. That even when she does learn, during the documentary actually, does not seem particularly remorseful makes things even worse, especially when both of them mention that the one who felt for his daughter was mostly her father.

At the same time, and through Xiaodi’s story, who is not alone in what she had to get through, particularly in the Engineering School, as a former teacher there also narrates in the movie, highlights the larger issue in China regarding the treatment of trans people, which seems, at least partially, to move among ignorance, racism, and persecution. At the same time, that one of the roots of this is the ever-present in patriarchal settings concepts of ‘what will the neighbors say’ emerges as even worse, essentially showing that the problem is one of mentality and education.

The majority of the 45 minutes of the documentary is taken up by interviews (unfortunately not from the people of the Engineering School) but  and Gao Guo also include some relief moments, with the ones with the camera following Xiaodi as she is walking in the places she went during her escape and some minor scenes of animation being rather well placed within the narrative. As such, the editing here emerges as rather competent, also because the succession of scenes actually intensifies the impact of the story.

“Xiaodi” is a great documentary, a truly shocking within its brutal honesty film and one which I feel everyone should watch, both for the story and for the context deriving from it. Once more, it is proven that reality can go much further than imagination.

Source: Asian Movie Pulse.com

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