"BE LIKE OTHERS"
Director:Tanaz Eshaghian
Trevor's Rating: 5 / 5 Stars

Clip (Skip to 5:00 Mark):

Phew. What an emotional screening. This film was super intense. The film documents men and women who are seeking sex reassignment surgery in Iran, a country where homosexuality is punishable by death, but that legally sanctions SRS under Islamic law. There are a number of characters here, among them a trans-woman named Vida who basically plays "trans-mom" to a number of people considering having the surgery. She counsels them, and even agrees to allow one of them to stay at her house while she recuperates from the surgery. She scolds trans-women who dress in anything but the acceptable hijab, encouraging them to lead a life as a "normal" woman in Iran would -- lest they give her people "a bad name."

Several of the trans-women admit that they would not undergo the surgery unless it was required under Islamic law. Without the operation, they would be legally considered men, and thus criminally engaging in homosexuality. There is so much here. The filmmaker follows up with one woman a year after she has the operation to find out that she has been totally cut off from her family. She now has to work as a sex worker in Tehran, saying that she's in the "business." In a heartbreaking scene, she tells the filmmaker that she has "killed" her ability to love, saying that if someone says to her "I love you," she asks if they have any money.

The other primary interviewee who is followed pre and post-surgery, Anahita, faces very different complications. In the beginning of the film, we meet her boyfriend, Ali, who seems to be very encouraging of her operation. He's a svelte, fashionable hairstylist, and would "read" as gay to Western eyes. He says before the operation that he could not be with her if she chose not to have it, because it would be a sin. Yet, in the follow up interview a year later, he has grown distant and called off their engagement -- though they continued to date. My friends and I talked at length about this couple, and we were torn as to how to understand the situation. We all wanted to read it as Ali was "gay" (that is to say, he liked boys) but knew that under Islamic law leading a gay life would be impossible -- thus dating and marrying trans-woman would be the closest way to legally conduct himself.

In the end, we agreed that we could not make any assumptions about these people's "true" desires or intentions, but that we agreed that -- in general -- it seemed clear that homosexuals were forced into SRS under Iran's regime. The doctor in the film who performs the surgeries claims that he believed homosexuals would run away scared after he described the surgery to potential patients, and that only "true" transgender people would still be interested after his grisly depiction of things. But this is clearly false -- if you are faced with a choice between constantly living in fear of being executed by the state, or undergoing SRS, many people will probably choose the latter.

You can find clips of the film on the official website and at the Sundance Film Festival website.