Elisa Mereghetti’s new documentary project follows Valentina Petrillo, a 48-year-old visually-impaired Paralympic athlete whose dream is to compete at the Tokyo 2021 Paralympics as Italy’s first trans athlete in a women’s category. The film is co-produced by the Italian lobby and support organization Gruppo Trans. The director explains more to Business Doc Europe.
Even when competing successfully in the track and field male category, 48-year-old Valentina Petrillo always perceived herself as a woman. In 2019 she started the process of transition and hormone therapy, but never lost her desire to compete. For two years she tried to convince the Italian sports federations that there are international rules regulating transgender people’s participation in sports. Finally she becomes the first Italian transgender athlete competing internationally in the women’s category, but will she able to compete at the Tokyo 2021 Paralympics?
Mereghetti’s film will follow Valentina as she tries to achieve this. It will also feature some of the extreme reactions that Petrillo’s story elicits.
“That is an issue that we’re working on in the film, the media representation of transgender people, and that is, as you know, a sensitive issue,” says the director, who explains how some people refer to the previous names of trans people as ‘dead’ names. “TV programs really dug into her private life, her family. Also the transition is an emotional process…I’m documenting this so I’m learning a lot about this world, but what I can say is that transition is a very emotional process, first of all, and then a physical process. But the media usually digs into the intimate, physical details… She wasn’t really prepared for that. It was a little bit crazy.”
The documentary will be an Italian/Japanese co-production together with Daruma. The budget is €244,450 with €105,500 yet to be sought. Mereghetti confirms that the project is generating a lot of interest at MIA and that she is receiving many requests for meetings. “I think the film will have a better chance to interest the broadcasters mainly for pre buys,” she says. “So it’s going to be interesting to see.”
Mereghetti also underlines how she will be mounting a strong impact campaign for the film.
“We participated in a very interesting workshop, which was led by Doc Society, on the impact distribution essentials. So we are preparing an impact campaign for when the film is going to be ready. We have already a wide network of LGBT organizations in Europe and elsewhere. So we are going to really plan on that because it’s probably going to be the first impact campaign of this kind in Italy. I think we have a very good thing there to work on and to give visibility and to try to make the film meaningful for changes that might happen within the sports regulations and in the attitude of people towards transgender people,” she says.
The 5 nanomoles of the title refers to the acceptable (and hotly disputed) level of testosterone within each litre of blood of trans athletes. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has requires female athletes to have less than five nanomoles of testosterone per litre of blood. Petrillo shows levels consistently well below the two-nanomoles-per-litre mark.
“We are strongly motivated by Valentina’s story for various reasons, among which the fact that it is a, exceptional story and that it has great impact potential,” Mereghetti further stresses in her film notes. “We believe that it can open many doors, in its power of affecting both Italian society and the international sports scene. It’s definitely a story that needs to be told, and we feel privileged to have this opportunity.”
