Laerte Coutinho is an extraordinary person, who despite some initial reluctance at the beginning of this documentary, is very happy to share her continuing dialogue about what it means to her to be a woman.  This 60-year-old extremely successful Brazilian artist and cartoonist was born a male,  and at the age of 57 decided to transition to what she believed to be her natural gender. With her relative independence afforded by her career and now that her children were adults and had left home, she felt she had very little to lose. It was however the very untimely death of one of her sons that made her now evaluate both her priorities and her route to happiness that propelled the decision at this juncture in her life.

The one thing that you sense about this very articulate and strong-willed women is her calm aura, and as she openly discusses her approach to transitioning, there is none of the expected anger or regret that it took her this long to reach a decision about something that fundamentally had always been a part of her. It is helped by the fact that she has been embraced by all generations of her close knit family, and is totally at ease when she is still affectionately addressed as ‘dad’ or ‘grandpa’ without any sense of not being fully accepted for who she is by her loved ones.

Laerte’s story is remarkable on many levels, but none as important as her own take on what transitioning means to her as it hardly fits in with the norm. Currently she is still weighing up the pros and cons on having breast implants but has had nothing even minor on a medical or surgical basis to physically alter her body shape.  She is not only at ease with this, even having posed for a stunning series of nude photographs in Rolling Stone, but she is adamant that her genitalia alone does not define her gender,  and that she is very much a woman. It’s her confidence in wanting to establish her own criteria in her transitioning that not only opens a brand new dialogue on the subject, but it greatly warms you to this very affable woman.

This new film, the first Brazilian documentary for Netflix, by Lygia Barbosa,  and Eliane Brum relies heavily on Laerte’s artwork, particularly her cartoon strips, as these have always been a means for her to express her feelings about her thoughts and life changes.  Now she has the documentary to do this too, and by the time the final credits roll you are more than grateful that she gave in, and let the filmmakers tell part of her remarkable story.