Transparent

Pink or blue. Male or female. Mommy or Daddy. Categories that we all take for granted are broken apart in Transparent, a documentary about 19 female-to-male transsexuals living in the United States who have given birth and, in all but a few stories, gone on to raise their biological children.

Transparent focuses on its subjects' lives as parents, revealing the diverse ways in which each person reconciles giving birth and being a biological mother with his masculine identity. Traditional views of gender are further re-examined through the variety of genders the children use to conceive of their parents. The first-person stories in Transparent explain how changing genders is dealt with and impacts the relationships, if at all, within these families.

This film has a shocking facade--as a story about transsexual parents, but the subjects resonate powerfully as typical parents and as human beings dealing with issues like single parenthood, teen pregnancy and their children's emotional and physical development. Through these extraordinary men, the film challenges the ways that people relate to one another, particularly within our immediate families, based on gender.