'Let Us Be' Doc on Intersex Rights Premieres at
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- "Let Us Be" world premieres at the Raindance Film Festival, a documentary following intersex individuals in India, Brazil and the U.S. and exposing non-consensual surgeries on intersex children
- Viviane D'Avilla, a Brazilian photographer and filmmaker, first traveled to India over a decade ago and met members of the Hijra community, a legally recognized third gender — an encounter that redirected her original photography project
- D'Avilla connected with Gopi Shankar, an intersex activist, and spent three months traveling India with him, producing her short film "Gopi" that deepened her urgency to portray intersex lives globally
- The feature brings together subjects including Hida Viloria, a U.S. intersex-movement pioneer; Carolina Iara, the first intersex person elected to public office in Latin America; and Aanandh Rajappan, a Dalit and intersex person in India
- D'Avilla said screening the film in the U.S. is "very urgent" because "the LGBTQIA+ community is threatened right now... Their rights are being taken away," given current political challenges
- D'Avilla stressed the film separates intersex from transgender experience, noting "a lot of confusion between being intersex and being transgender, when they are very different experiences" has suppressed intersex storytelling
- "Let Us Be" is a U.S.-Brazil co-production between Dona Rosa and Social Construct Films, funded through an international co-production fund to expand the project's reach
Why it matters: The film reframes intersex rights as a transnational human rights issue spanning India, Brazil and the U.S. — not a geography-specific concern — while arriving at a moment D'Avilla explicitly described as urgent: U.S. political headwinds against LGBTQIA+ rights. Its co-production model between Brazil and the U.S. also signals how independent documentaries are using cross-border financing to reach global audiences.
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