All about my father

Film information
Original name: Alt om min far
Direction: Even Benestad
Country: Norway-Denmark
Year: 2002
Script: Even Benestad y August B. Hanssen
Photograph: Bjørn Eivind Aarskog, Even Benestad, Øyvind Garau y Steffan Strandberg.
Music: John Erik Kaada
Edition: Erik Andersson
Actors: Esben Benestad/Esther Pirelli (father), Elsa Almås (second wife), Elisabeth Skaflem Benestad (sister), Liv (first wife), Even Benestad (son).
Time: 75 minutes
Awards: Berlin Teddy Award

Liv, the first wife, married in love and very soon they have a daughter, Elizabeth, and then a son, Even, the director of the film. They were a typical family, very closed, with a very important presence of the father in the family. One day, Liv come back from the work to pick up her keys and she felt suspicious because her husband delay to answer and also curtains were closed. She think he was having an affair but she was very surprise when saw Esben dressed as Esther Pirelli. At the beginning they tried to continue the relationship but then they divorced because Esben couldn’t stop dressed as a woman.
Elisabeth, the sister had very good memories about her father, kind and loving, always present when she need him. She think how it feels be daughter of a transsexual, what happen if he lost his masculine identity that was always her reference. She thinks it will be very sad for her. She had difficulties to assume that her father will be permanent a woman.

Elsa is the second wife of Esben, with her he rebuild his life because she accept his double identity. Elsa said sometime Esben is all the time a woman, full of feminine staff, what she hate sometimes. What she like the most about Esben is his masculine identity, his wild, determination, force and intelligence. If she feel could not live with his feminine part, she stops the relationship.
Even, the son, tell his father that he always had seen him as a father and it will be that spite of he dress as a woman, for him he will never be a woman. Esben feel bad about that, he felt is limited in his freedom and he said it is impossible be a man in the clothes of a woman. He insist be a father go further tan sperms and ovules. Also Even think his father should give all more time to get used to his new identity.

All have a debate of rational and emotional matter in this field. Every one had a unique experience of what is be a woman and a man. All did not see Esben as a woman. Esben said he is a real woman and feel bad for the opinion of the rest of the family. He felt nobody had the right to attack him or decide for him; he is only explains himself not to defend of the others.

At the end of the movie Esben appear in a meeting of Transsexual Union organized by Tone Maria Hansen, he said he want to talk for not common people about tyranny of majority. He wants to eradicate bad diagnosis that harms children only because they express their sex in a different way. He want people will be proud of what they are, even though around they are tried as ill, sinners or criminals. That is why he is very worry about it and what to change this situation.

Movie is very interesting because shows many aspects of a decision that is personal but also familiar and social because is a consequence of a social obligation that define man and woman as a binary conception. Esben think this identity is base on his sexuality in two different manners: he enjoy be a man for a while as much as he like express as a feminine transvestite, taking the path of transgenerity; he live in both identities. His family tolerate him but he received many critics that make him feel bad because they tried he choose for one of those identities and do not respect his choice to pass through masculinity and femininity. There is a continue contradiction between what family want and what he want. That is why he decides to fight against tyranny, for happiness and proud to be what he really is.