Still: They and Them - Ingrid Kamerling

In the IDFA Frontlight selection They and Them*, director/psychologist Ingrid Kamerling immerses herself among the staff and patients of a youth gender clinic in the Dutch city of Zaandam in order to highlight one of the most urgent and divisive topics of our times, how to treat kids whose very existence is rendered difficult, in some cases impossible, by the bodies they were assigned at birth.
 
We meet kids and young adults at a crossroads within their lives, most in acute distress as they articulate the trauma they feel. We also meet the highly skilled psychologists at the clinic whose task it is to navigate what amounts to an ethical minefield, all the time who are stressed, overworked and working within an underfunded institution. What’s more, they are operating much of the time against a backdrop of apathy, mistrust or sometimes downright hostility among a wider public who either fail to gauge the seriousness of the kids’ trauma, or believe that they should wait until full maturity before treatment, often surgical, is undertaken. 

The clinic’s staff are gender diverse and led by the very CIS Sander who cuts a distinctive figure on his Harley Davidson and smoking a cigar. He may not seem overly woke (he refuses to subscribe to pronoun assignation on his email) but is passionate in his devotion to the wellbeing and treatment of the kids in his charge. Another core protagonist is Bianca who is gender neutral and who clashes with Sander on the matter of pronoun usage. Bianca also articulates their regret that they had surgical intervention earlier in their life on the basis that infertility was mandatory before their gender re-assignation could be completed.

At the heart of the matter is what Kamerling terms “the most important moral dilemma in gender care,” that of enabling the kids to determine their own future. This is a process that is approached with the utmost care and gravity by the staff, during which kids are asked to process all outcomes and possibilities, such as imagining a change of heart in the future over wanting to have kids themselves. “We make people doubt themselves a lot, because doubt helps people to grow,” says Sander.

One particular case is that of Sem, with learning difficulties, who wants be female. The issue of mental health care for kids is already problematic, but within the context of gender the problems are increased manyfold, argues Kamerling.

“There are a lot of negative forces working against gender transition, for example, the money, the bureaucracy, the climate in the Netherlands, how people think about it. In general, [gender care] is a lot more difficult than in the normal, regular pyramid [shaped] mental health care for children.”

Voices against transition therapy and surgery can be particularly vocal in The Netherlands, which is why Kamerling had to be very careful in the edit suite when cutting from more that 120 hours of material, both to offer balance and to underline that the transition process must be a long and considered one. This is no easy task in a film of 78 minutes with many storylines and individual testimonies.

The director is keen that the film will generate much debate and that international broadcasters are brave enough to give screen time to a subject of such existential significance. There will be Q&As on the theme of gender after the IDFA screenings and its broadcast on Dutch television. “We hope that it helps the debate in Holland and in other countries so that people can get more informed, so they can see how complex it is and how careful we must be and what kind of decisions this team had to make. [The Netherland] is an example, I think, of good gender care,” says Kamerling.

“It will also be used for school and psychologist education and in hospitals for doctors, because there are a lot of doctors and psychologists who do not know enough about gender care. But first we do the impact campaign with television, and then the discussion really starts. Hopefully in a good way.”

They and Them is produced by Tangerine Tree. It is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund.

IDFA takes place on November 8 - 19. For an overview of Dutch docs selected for IDFA 2023, inlcuding screening schedule, click here.

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*Film is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund