A defiant story about an intersex sex worker on the run from a sleazy pimp and Italian gangsters. In collaboration with the NNID, with a prelude and Q&A.
We proudly present our collaboration with the NNID, a programme in which we showcase intersex stories, both fictional and non-fictional. We open the programme with A Normal Girl (2019), a documentary about an activist fighting for intersex rights and recognition. The feature film Ponyboi shows us the story of the titular character, an intersex sexworker on a tumultuous Valentines Day. After the films, there will be a panel discussion hosted by the NNID, speakers tba.
This neon-coloured crime thriller spanning the course of one Valentine’s Day follows Ponyboi, a young intersex sex worker who works at a laundromat with his best friend Angel. He spends his nights with his secret lover and pimp, Vinnie, the father of Angel’s child. However, when a drug deal goes sideways, he finds himself on the run from the Italian mob. While on the run, Ponyboi is forced to confront his painful past, from medical trauma to familial estrangement. But when he meets a mysterious drifter, he is offered a chance at escaping his past and carving out a future for himself.
Ponyboi is the feature-length adaptation of the 2017 short movie by the same name that was written, directed, and led by River Gallo. Their involvement in this feature makes this the first movie that is starred, produced and written by an openly intersex person. To Gallo, Ponyboi is both an act of defiance as well as an act of self-love and the assertion of the existence of intersex people. As Gallo explains in an interview for The Los Angeles Times, Ponyboi is about “someone finding freedom in the acceptance of their past and the possibility that, through transcending their own beliefs about themselves, perhaps their future could be a little brighter.”
The panel talk following the screening is hosted by NNID and features two intersex speakers, Robin Barthelemy (they/them) and Koen Wildenbeest (he/him), who will share their personal experiences. The discussion will be moderated by Ellen van der Velden (she/her).
With the short film A Normal Girl as prelude.
A Normal Girl— Aubree Bernier-Clarke (United States, 14 mins)
A Normal Girl tells the story of Pidgeon Pagonis’s personal history and their work as an activist for social justice and bodily autonomy. As a child they underwent unwanted surgical interventions, now they work to challenge the social construction and medical enforcement of binary definitions of gender and sex.
