Director Julie Cohen’s latest documentary, “Every Body,” premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival, is a sensitive, empathetic look at intersex peoples. Similar to how the doc showcases the extraordinary lives of its subjects, the path to getting it made also came from a unique place. “I used to be a ‘Dateline’ producer many, many years ago,” Cohen told TheWrap. “In 2018, they asked me to come back there for a stint. I’m doing development work, looking through their archives, looking for stories that might make jumping off points for documentaries.”
She stumbled upon the case of David Reimer, a man who was injured as an infant and was, through a series of bizarre events, raised as a girl by his family at the encouragement of the medical community. It led Cohen to wonder how much the world at large knew about the intersex community. “Even people that are pretty plugged in on LGBT issues generally just don’t know enough about intersex beyond having seen it. Seeing that it’s that letter [I] that’s somewhere in [LGBTQIA],” she said. The rest came fairly organically, with Cohen connecting with intersex activist Alicia Weigel, which led her to Sean Saifa Wall and River Gallo.
But what trajectory to take with the documentary? For a doc that clocks in just over 90-minutes, Cohen doesn’t just tackle the historical elements intersex people have gone through, but what’s happening with them currently as well as how the medical community responds to them. For Cohen, she found the path to telling the story in the Hulu series “The Handmaid’s Tale.” The series sees the various imprisoned women all having to go by the name of the man who effectively owns them; Elisabeth Moss’ character’s starts the series as Offred (“of Fred”).
“There’s a scene where they are very boldly, and in danger to their own lives, holding up signs saying what their real names are,” said Cohen. “It occurred to me that even though, externally, things are going very badly for these women, the victory is speaking up for themselves like they’ve already won…the big moment that we should be leading up [in the doc] to is them coming forward, is the decision to come out as who they are.”
Cohen went on to discuss how she worked to avoid turning the people at the center of her documentary into specimens, as well as wanting to avoid turning the film too political.
Interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
We’re seeing a lot of anti-transphobia in the political world. What’s it been like bringing this out into the world with all that happening?
Julie Cohen: Intersex people, although this is less talked about, are in that legislation as well. The House [of Representatives], for the first time…their anti-trans women in sports bill includes a provision that lets them also discriminate against intersex women. It’s hard because I don’t want this necessarily to be a culture war film, but it kind of is.
When Focus [Features] released the trailer and put it out on TikTok, about three quarters of the reactions were positive and people like, “Oh, you’re fighting, this is beautiful, whatever.” The other quarter were really negative and they were split between two things. One was like, “Go back where you came from, don’t talk about this. I don’t want to hear this.” But the the other half of [them] was like, “I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you exist.” It’s so weird that that’s how people are gonna react to hearing this story. “No, I don’t like this so I’m just gonna say it’s not true, you’re not real.”
Did you meet any resistance in the early days of putting this together? Did some believe it was too out there?
I would say I did. NBC News Studios and I went to various places and we did get that reaction from some, a lot. I will say, Focus Features had a very different response. I would say the executives’ reaction was they seemed to be very personally fascinated by the story. They were like, “Wow, that’s incredible. I don’t know anything about that.” I was surprised and delighted when someone the size of Focus Features decided that they wanted to take on this film and distribute it. To take on the film as a partner from the very start and then to distribute it financially.
I noticed how the filming of the talking heads segments felt very cozy. These aren’t subjects, they’re people. Was that intentional?
Certainly. In this case we wanted the main shots of the main interview to be about people’s faces, not their bodies. This is somebody talking to you and I wanted them looking straight at the camera. Because the whole idea of the film is saying to the audience, “Okay, you didn’t know about this, but I am talented. I am telling you now. Hello, here I am.” That was all natural light in those main interviews. There aren’t any lights. It was a big pain in the butt for the cinematographer to face them the right way in a room so that we could have light shining on the face without creating problems in the background.
“Every Body” hits theaters June 30.
