Rurangi

This is an awesome series/movie.

The pace is slow. Deliberately. The actors are given room to pace the dialogue and take you along for the ride.

There's a tenseness that pervades the work. Tense situations handled very realistically. You can feel the discomfort from all sides. And yet somehow you feel there's still hope and acceptance coming.

So much gender politics online is angry. And demanding. Often by well meaning supporters.

This isn't about pronoun wars. It's about people being authentically who they are.

The trans people I have meet and worked with have never been about the politics.

They just didn't want to be who they were born as.

Hopefully this work will challenge, educate and relate.

Visibility for trans people. And how their transition affects family and friends as well as themselves.

First, it should be made clear somewhere that this was originally intended as a web series before being released as a movie (hence the second nearly identical IMDB page) and then broken back into 5 episodes and released on Hulu (in the US). In any event, the finished product is very well made in terms of acting and overall production values, but boy is it slow. With only 90 minutes to tell its story, you'd hope the plot would unfold quickly and efficiently. Instead, the story is incredibly slow and very little happens.

So our hero has transitioned but we've all been there, what makes this one different is he's returning to his hometown, a community with traditional family values, to be an activist for social justice and raise awareness about the ins and outs of transitioning to in the area. His father, whom he hasn't seen since the whole thing started, is not impressed. Perhaps not the next Odyssey but a decent production showing us that diversity is our greatest strength.

This little series that I had just discovered, is a perfect example of bringing the gender theme to the people without being woke at all. It just is this person with his story, his problems and family. All the actors did a great job bringing their characters alive. But Elz Carrad gave a stand-out performance, which I'm sure was partly derived from his own life story. But the way he displayed the roller coaster of emotions was very touching. And Arlo Green as his ex-boyfriend also gave the perfect performance of a "straight" guy that has a wider spectrum than he is willing to admit. Very realistic, from my own experiences. I was also pleased that they didn't show a queer bashing scene. Just like Schitt's Creek they delved into character development more istead of violence.

I'm already looking forward to season 2.