The BBC will be airing a film about a transgender teen on a children’s TV channel next week.
The film will star Leo, a 13-year-old guy, will tell the story of his life interchanged in a sequence of moving diary sequences.
Called ‘My Life: My Name Is Leo’, he will explain the bullying he’s encounted from people who could not accept who he is.
The film is set across seven months, following Leo and his family as he undergoes hormone therapy, meet other trans kids and eagerly waiting for a new passport that confirms his real identity to the world.
‘I just want people to finally see me the way I see myself,’ he says.
‘I had wanted to do a story on a transgender child for a while, because I know there are kids out there having a tough time. But up to now, we hadn’t found the right story to tell, and we trusted Nine Lives Media to tell this one sensitively,’ Kez Margrie, executive producer, told BBC’s in house magazine Ariel.
‘It feels very much like his journey and story, as told by him.’
Cat Lewis, Nine Lives executive producer, said: ‘The great thing about making documentaries like this for children is that they’re not born with prejudices.’
Or as Leo himself concludes in the film: ‘Everyone’s different somehow.’
My Life: I Am Leo will be broadcast as part of CBBC’s anti-bullying week on 17 November at 6pm.