‘Let Us Be’ Director Viviane D’Avilla Talks About Shining a Light on Intersex Rights in the U.S.: ‘Their Rights Are Being Taken Away’

Over a decade ago, Brazilian photographer and filmmaker Viviane D’Avilla traveled to India looking to develop a photography project based on the country’s culture and spirituality. There, she met members of the Indian Hijra community, a legally recognized third gender encompassing those who are transgender, intersex or eunuchs. That meeting would completely change D’Avilla’s project and become the original seed for “Let Us Be,” having its world premiere at the Raindance Film Festival. 

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“Let Us Be” follows intersex individuals — those born with an anatomy not typically male or female — across India, Brazil and the U.S. The director chronicles their journeys of self-discovery to expose the ongoing human rights struggle against non-consensual surgeries performed on intersex children, shining a light on the rigid binaries that shape society’s understanding of sex and gender. 

Speaking with Variety ahead of the film’s Raindance premiere, D’Avilla recalls that first trip to India and her first encounters with members of the Hijra community, saying she was “struck by the contrast between the way they are considered sacred in certain cultural contexts, while also facing deep discrimination and often living on the margins of society.”

The director then connected with Gopi Shankar, an “intersex activist who fights against non-consensual surgeries on intersex children and also supports LGBTQIA+ people in situations of abuse and social vulnerability.” The duo spent three months travelling across India to learn more about the community and Shankar’s work, resulting in D’Avilla’s short film “Gopi,” which awakened in her “a much deeper sense of urgency to understand and portray intersex lives across different territories and countries.”

Once the filmmaker decided to embark on a feature project, she enlisted other subjects, including Aanandh Rajappan, a Dalit and intersex person living in India, author and activist Hida Viloria, a pioneer of the intersex movement in the U.S., and Carolina Iara, the first intersex person elected to public office in Latin America. 

“Finding willing participants who could be open and trust me and be comfortable with me was crucial to the project’s success,” says D’Avilla. “It was important to bring these different generations and perspectives together, showing how the intersex movement can exist through many voices, experiences and forms of expression.” The director also wanted the film to feel global, as she wanted to highlight how human rights issues around intersex people are not “only about geography, territory, or even specific laws” but “about how societies respond to people who are different from what they consider ‘normal.’”

Asked about the importance of speaking in depth about the intersex experience and the relative lack of documentaries on the subject, D’Avilla says that, within the community, “ a lot of people are not really ready to come out publicly as intersex.” ”There is also a lot of confusion between being intersex and being transgender, when they are very different experiences. I think this lack of public understanding has contributed to fewer stories being told.”

On this, the director says it is “very important” to screen the film in the U.S., “particularly given current political challenges affecting LGBTQIA+ rights.” “The LGBTQIA+ community is threatened right now in the U.S. Their rights are being taken away. It’s very urgent to bring light to this subject, in that country, to rebel against what is happening and to try to bring more awareness to educators, politicians, doctors and society in general.”

“Let Us Be” is a U.S.-Brazil co-production between Dona Rosa and Social Construct Films, a decision that came early in the funding process when producers decided to apply for an international co-production fund. Partnerships like it are becoming more and more common in Brazil, a country currently under the bright lights of international attention thanks to two back-to-back banner years with Walter Salles’ “I’m Still Here” and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent.” 

“This kind of international production [model] is very interesting, especially for independent films,” adds the director. “In Brazil, we still struggle a lot with funding and our possibilities to develop and produce projects can be limited. So working across different countries and with different partners can really expand our possibilities creatively, financially, and in terms of reach. It allows the film to travel further, to enter new conversations, and to be seen by different audiences. At the same time, I think it is very important not to lose the identity of where the film comes from. Even when a project becomes international, it still needs to carry the culture, the perspective and the signature of its director. For me, that balance is essential, opening the film to the world without losing its roots.”