Formless

This project was born from questions I had about my experience with gender and thus has been highly personal to me. I’ve spent years questioning my identity and ultimately trying to understand how I fit into the roles society has assigned to me, but I was never satisfied. This film is the story of that journey leading to self-acceptance.

Formless follows the lives of four trans individuals from the moment they first became aware of gender through the realizations and misalignments with their bodies as they began to understand themselves. It takes us to the uncomfortable places, exploring dysphoria, trauma and acceptance

Every person is born without conditioning. They are raised and taught who they are and who they should become. They're expected to fit into the mold of the perfect "boy" or "girl". But what happens when someone doesn't ht that mold?

This film began after a summer of self-discovery, I had always known there was something strange about my body, something I didn't know how to think about. I'd gone through times where I hated the way I was perceived, where I thought I could never be comfortable with the body I live in, that something was wrong.

I began to research. I wanted to understand this experience and the paths others have taken to overcome dysphoria. The pre-interview process was an exercise in empathy and contemplation. I came to each of our subjects and they told me their stories.

We decided to tell this story through the battle between two characters: the body and the mind. After the interview process we wrote a shot list that would highlight the aspects of the body that brought about the strongest emotion; we would shoot the body and over those shots animate the mind. For trans people the body and the mind often disagree on things...

We created three distinct atmospheres where the body could exist under different kinds of obscurity. These environments became our playground as we began to shoot the film. I can't be more proud of my talent and collaborators, they were the reason this film is what it is.

Then we began post-production. I had the privilege of working closely with an amazing group of animators and an immensely talented editor who all worked to bring the vision to life. I couldn't have asked for a better team surrounding me on this project.