The Changing The Game director spoke to DIVA about the importance of telling uplifting trans stories
BY YASMIN VINCE, IMAGES BY FOTON PICTURES
This year has not gotten off to the best start for trans rights in the US. January isn’t over but it’s already seen the new president, Donald Trump, sign an executive order that limits the rights of trans people to include their gender on ID cards, instead insisting on “biological sex”. But, in and among the doom and gloom, there is still a whole community staying strong and fighting for their rights.
Changing The Game tells the story of three such trans people. This Emmy-winning documentary dives into the lives of trans teenage athletes – Sarah, a skier and teen policymaker in New Hampshire, Andraya, a track star from Connecticut, and Mack Beggs, a Texan wrestler. The film’s director, Michael Barnett, sat down with DIVA to discuss the documentary and why these stories are important.
Hi Michael, congratulations on the film! What made you want to direct these stories?
The intention was never to make a movie. One of my dearest family friends from childhood had a child transitioning. They wanted me to share it very early on. I’m a filmmaker and a storyteller. They wanted me to wrap my head around it and help share it with our larger community.
My initial response was not the right response. And it wasn’t because I just didn’t know. My initial response was, “Wow, she’s so young.” It came from a place of love, but also a place of just ignorance. I started my own journey, consuming as much information as I can about trans kids, and what that looks like, and what that journey looks like. Along that journey, I went to this conference in Seattle called Gender Odyssey, which is a safe space for families of kids who are transitioning to come and learn everything from mental health and how to navigate that.
There I met Mack. He was a really useful human being to me in kind of unpacking my own subconscious bias. At that point, I still wasn’t thinking about directing this movie. But I started to visit Mack and his family over the course of a year – his junior year. Eventually, we decided to build a coalition of filmmakers and this film was ultimately the product of all of that.
I have to say, Mack’s story really stayed with me, especially when you saw the dynamic with his grandparents. Why did you decide to feature them so heavily?
Grandma Nancy is a really special human. As a gun-toting Southern Baptist, she fits the mold of what we would expect an anti-trans person to be. And Texas is kind of the epicentre of conflict for this community. So I thought she was such an extraordinary voice for her own transition, her own journey from not understanding to pure love and support. I couldn’t find a better human being to illuminate what it means to be a parent that offers unconditional love.
Alongside Mack, Sarah and Andraya had beautiful stories to share. Why did you feature them?
We shot a few kids actually. We decided not to keep going with some of them for mental health reasons. I think people think there’s a million trans kids trying to get into youth sports. There’s not. There’s so few. There were around eight kids in America in total that we could find when we started making this film, so we didn’t really have a choice of who to feature. I was fortunate that they were all so wonderful.
In the documentary, you touch on the backlash people were getting but we didn’t see loads of it. Why did you frame it that way?
We wanted to make a film that was a beacon and showed their courage. We wanted to give agency back to these kids. The narrative gets hijacked so much by people who have no empathy for the community. We had to let some of the noise through because hate is so ubiquitous, but that noise is in their lives everyday and they still proceed to live in a way that brings joy. I wanted the film to be more representative of that.
What do you hope people take away from the film?
I hope people can come away from the film with some empathy and realise it’s not your job to judge them. It’s not your job to politicise what it means to you. Just understand that it’s everyone’s job to create safe space for kids, period.
CHANGING THE GAME is released on Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, Google Play Movies and TV, and YouTube Movies on 31 January 2025.
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