About
Inside us all is the person we need to be ...
The Story
Just Charlie is a film about chasing your dreams and accepting those who are different because, sometimes, the rules on how to love, what you can do, and who you should be are meant to be broken ...
The inspiring and heartwarming journey of football mad Charlie, a transgender teenager, discovering her true self in an often unsympathetic world.
Football star Charlie is a girl trapped in the body of a boy. Rejected by her Father and teammates, will she ever play football again?
Just Charlie is no ordinary coming-of-age tale. Charlie is a girl divided by the wish to live up to her Father’s expectations and the overwhelming need to be true to herself. An all-consuming desire to embrace her true identity gives Charlie the strength to stand up for what she knows to be right.
The film is set in Tamworth, a small Midlands market town where everyone knows everyone, football rules, and the characters struggle to understand things outside of their comfort zones.
Writer's Statement
Gender Dysphoria, or Transgenderism, is a condition that challenges our generally held belief of self and identity. It is the mismatch between our biological gender and the gender we identify with.
What we see outside is only half the story, but for transgender people it is a very important story. It is a fact that through an aberration in nature sometimes we are not given the body we should have. If through modern medicine and medical procedure we can give people the physical label they need for a full and complete life, then why not?
I have known transgender people and have been fascinated by this condition for many years. Someone I knew from Tamworth, somewhere I have known for twenty years and have lived and worked. When I knew them they were an awkward teenage boy with a difficult personality to place. Someone you would class as odd and yet when I met them again they had become a confident young woman. A real feat given the town they lived in. Tamworth is an old market town that is not racially mixed, has a large poverty problem, little cultural diversity and a place where if you are different in any way you will be noticed and people will comment and have an opinion.
It is paramount that all the characters of this film are rounded and believable, there can be no stereotypes when raising questions about stereotype.
Every character in this piece has to challenge themselves, their fundamental beliefs and deal with the emotional consequences. It is as much their transformation as the central characters, and I hope the audiences as well. This is a story about identity, who we think we are and who we really are. About being true to ones self in the face of terrible adversity.
Peter Machen
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