A DOCUMENTARY SERIES FROM CHRISTINE LORD
The Courage to Live Your Authentic Self.
True to Life reveals the personal struggles and often complicated lives of transgender and gender-diverse people. Follow along as they attempt to live
and thrive while courageously challenging the social biases thrown at them.
Watch The Series Trailer
Series Outline
Each episode explores the life of one person as told through their eyes. The subjects throughout the series come from a variety of social, economic, and ethnic backgrounds further expanding the diverse experiences each faces throughout their lives. This diversity of subjects throughout the series gives us greater insight into how each trans-life differs in comparison. In addition to the unique challenges faced by each subject, the series reveals numerous universal challenges and obstacles Transgender, gender-diverse, and Two-spirit people face as a whole.
The strength of the overall series lies in how each subject manages and copes with their personal struggles and societal challenges placed upon them in a different way. Subjects divulge their personal strategies for dealing with the hate, discrimination, bullying, and rejection they often face in their lives. Further, they reveal the courage needed to meet all the challenges head-on, in an effort to survive and even thrive in an often intolerant society.
Each episode includes formal and informal interviews with the subject and people close to them. Topics encompass the obstacles they face from society and how they cope or attempt to cope with those obstacles. The story is further strengthened with additional verité style filming capturing their daily life activities, both work and play.
Nicola Spurling
is featured in the first
episode of True to Life.
Poster Design Concept
The official poster design was a calibration between Christine Lord and John Godfrey (Chargefield Key Art in Toronto, CA).
The design embodies how the majority of the world sees gender, as binary, male and female. This is translated as black & white in the poster. A spectrum of colours from both the Transgender and non-binary flags are emitted in the shadow of one individual. This represents how Transgender, gender-diverse, and Two-Spirit people generally view gender, as a spectrum, far from black & white. The crosswalk signifies the journey they are on throughout life, seemingly blending into society.
The "True to Life" logo is bold font representing how the transgender and gender-diverse communities show the courage needed to boldly navigate the world.
Why this Series is Important
Transgender and gender-diverse people worldwide face discrimination, hate, and hardship due to a lack of empathy and profound social bias from the general population. “True to Life” hopes to become a necessary catalyst for change by further developing our understanding of Transgender and gender-diverse people and the obstacles and barriers they face daily in life. Understanding is the first step to changing how we perceive and treat people in our society. By building empathy for Transgender and gender-diverse people through film, we can help improve the quality of their lives, and even save lives.
