How do you find freedom and home within a trans body?
Skinned - A Short Film
Jesse longs for a reality where they feel as free and embodied as they did when they were 8 years old. It was then, before puberty spun things out of control, that Jesse last felt at home.
Skinned is a body-surrealism narrative short film, written and directed by Naomi Honig. The film follows Jesse, a nonbinary twenty something, on a series of days turned dysphoria nightmares, as they dream of returning to the embodied freedom of their childhood.
While much of the film focuses on Jesse’s disturbing encounters with a world that can only view them in a gendered and controlling way, the film is ultimately about liberation. The decision to pursue gender affirming surgery is often framed as a treatment for misery, but it can also be pursued out of a desire for joy. This film exists as a creative imagining of what the joy on the other side can look like. What does freedom feel like? How do we get there? Does my physical body need to change to experience that freedom, or does the world around me need to change? How will I feel on the other side?
Our film will utilize comedy, the theater of gender performativity, surrealism, and theater of the grotesque to represent the experience of dysphoria, and create a contrast to the peace and stillness of liberation and embodiment.
Mac Hendrickson is producing the film, with Ben Goelz as Cinematographer. Naomi Honig will direct and play the role of "Jesse."
