New to DVD this week:
TRANSFORMER
Director:
Michael Del Monte
Premiere:
Austin 2017
Select Festivals:
Hot Docs, Big Sky Doc, Hot Springs Doc
About:
A portrait of a champion powerlifter as she struggles with body image issues during her transition to female.
For most of her life, Janae Marie Kroczaleski lived as Matt Kroc, achieving fame within the bodybuilding world with a world record in powerlifting before being publicly outed as transgender. Having bulked up to a 250-lb hypermasculine ideal, however, has left Janae conflicted about her ability to meet society’s standards of what a woman should look like, and what space there is for her in the sport to which she has devoted so much of her time and energy. This ambivalence around Janae’s physical transition – together with the refreshingly open and supportive relationship she shares with her teenage sons – helps differentiate Del Monte’s likeable project from the numerous overly familiar stories of transition that have emerged over the past couple of decades.
what (not) to doc 