Hanneke Dragtsma - In transitie

2012, Dutch, Hanneke Dragtsma,

Original title: "In transitie" (In transition)

'Martin de Jong decides to travel to England, where he symbolically wants to bury his man's life. Upon his return, he begins a new life as a woman.

As Marieke, she can only follow her own path, by no longer making herself dependent on the judgment of others. She ends up on an emotional rollercoaster, looking for herself. In a series of short dialogues, her thoughts, doubts, fears, and desires pass by.' 

'Hanneke Dragtsma (1965) was born and raised in Heerenveen. She grew up as a boy in a family with three sisters. A seventies family, where her mother traditionally took care of the children, and her father with great dedication to protecting his family. She grew up as an insecure boy who could not connect herself well with the body in which she lived.

As a child, she mainly immersed herself in technique, where the mechanical movement fascinated her the most. So in the eighties, she went to the then car school on the Loolaan in Apeldoorn. The older she got, the more her boy's body played tricks on her. She went through periods of prolonged depression until she almost died of it at the age of thirty-three. Sometimes you almost have to die to take on life.'

'She broke with her old life and went into transition to be the woman she truly is. It was a journey in which she was confronted with fear and rejection, and was challenged to go her own way apart from the opinions of others. Now, almost twenty years later, the greatest added value of the transition is not so much the physical transformation, but the growth and development that it went through socially, emotionally, and spiritually. She now sees herself as an "expert of being", shaped by life. But every transgender person, and deeply every human being, can become an "expert" through the process he or she goes through.'

Available via bol.com

and hannekedragtsma.nl