In 2020, filmmaker Sam Feder’s highly acclaimed documentary Disclosure brought the conversation about transgender representation into households across the country with its Netflix release. The film warned that increased visibility for the trans community is often met with increased violence and hate.
“Clearly, we had no idea it’d be this bad,” Feder admits now, five years later. “It was around late 2021 when things in the mainstream press were getting overtly biased.”
In 2023, more than 370 contributors to The New York Times signed onto a letter arguing that the paper’s coverage of transgender people, especially trans youth, showed favoritism towards anti-trans viewpoints and violated its editorial guidelines.
Feder’s latest film, Heightened Scrutiny, features trans actors like Laverne Cox and Elliot Page and tackles the implications of political and social backlash against the trans community in recent months and years. With the Trump Administration at the helm, continued rhetorical attacks on trans youth are being realized through Executive Orders designed to ban trans youth from receiving gender-affirming—oftentimes life-saving—care.
What started out as a film directly critiquing the mainstream media, with a particular focus on The New York Times’s front-page coverage of trans issues, eventually found a narrative anchor in the story of American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawyer Chase Strangio as he prepared to argue U.S. v. Skrmetti, a landmark Supreme Court case, in December 2024. Strangio had hoped to set a new legal precedent by lifting a Tennessee law restricting gender-affirming care for minors. But on June 18, The justices ruled to uphold the Tennessee law, leaving the future of access to gender-affirming care in Tennessee and elsewhere uncertain.
While Disclosure was picked up by Netflix following its buzzy Sundance premiere in 2020, Heightened Scrutiny, which was met with similar critical reviews, has gone nearly six months since its Sundance premiere without U.S. distribution. Feder and their producer, Amy Scholder, spoke with The Progressive about the rush to the finish line for the film’s premiere, the importance of spotlighting young queer people, and how the rightwing shift in U.S. politics is making it difficult for social justice-themed documentaries like Heightened Scrutiny to find proper theatrical distribution. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: Given the extent to which this film revolves around critiquing mainstream media, how did you approach presenting that information to viewers who may be learning about this kind of bias for the first time?
Sam Feder: That was challenging because we did this research, we had these sit-down interviews with the journalists that we did in March 2024, so it was four or five months before it was announced that Chase would be fighting the case. In the months after these interviews, we realized we really needed to have a story that showed the material consequences of what all these brilliant journalists were talking about [regarding the coverage of trans people in the press]. When it was announced that Chase would be the one representing the ACLU in the Supreme Court, that was just the perfect marriage. We had worked with Chase before on Disclosure and we had already interviewed him for this film because he talks about the link between the media and these laws.
Amy Scholder: There was this statistic in Disclosure that I think was remarkable to a lot of people: The vast majority of Americans haven’t met a trans person. Just to know that most people don't have a connection to a trans person and, yet, form these opinions that are so adamant. People tend to feel very passionately one way or another in their views about transgender civil rights. What we were seeing when we finished Disclosure was that the stories around the visibility of trans people in Hollywood were mostly puff pieces, or profiles of individuals really focusing on introducing this public that didn’t know trans people to trans people. And when we were experiencing this turn in public opinion in the early 2020s and could trace it to the mainstream media—it was so scary because you, again, realized that all these opinions were based on misinformation, bias, and a desire to scapegoat one community. We saw with gay and lesbian rights that once somebody had a gay person in their family, they tended to then be sympathetic. You would get a Republican who had been on the side of all this anti-gay legislation and then find out their daughter was gay, like a Dick Cheney type, and that person’s position would change. We didn’t see that exactly in the trans community. Instead, we saw a lot of parents panicking: “What if my kid is trans and I don’t want that to happen?”
Q: This documentary showcases the importance of younger trans people feeling supported by the adults and public figures around them, as we see with the inclusion of twelve-year-old Mila, who gives a big speech after Chase presents at the Supreme Court in December.
Feder: At first, I felt very ethically concerned about bringing in the voices of young people but, at the same time, this whole conversation was around young people and they were not being given a voice in the media. I knew we had to find some sort of way and while we were brainstorming, I met Mila and her family. They wanted to help and be part of this. That first day where I shot the footage at the school board of Mila, I didn’t know her yet, but as I approached the school with the camera, she beelined right up to me and, unprovoked, just said: “You have my permission to film me.” She wants to be heard, she wants to speak. She had a lot to say and she was fearless. We’re really grateful that we got to work with Mila.
Q: One of the most telling scenes in the film is that sequence at the school board meeting where Mila speaks up, and all the adults in the room are glued to their phones. They’re not even giving Mila the basic courtesy of hearing her out. Could you speak to being in that room and capturing that?
Feder: It was excruciating. It took me days to get over it, to be honest, and it wasn’t something I could really convey with just retelling the story. Once we had the footage and I could share it with people, they could start to sense how horrible it was. You just feel so helpless and, at the same time, you’re understanding people hate you—that you are not seen as equal, you’re not seen as deserving of rights, and then you’re there as an adult supporting these young people. And then that helplessness of not wanting them to experience this. There’s so much rage and helplessness and hurt, and all of that was just swirling together. I had never experienced that. I usually have a pretty thick skin around politics, and especially around transphobia. I’m able to do the work because I’m able to not take it personally and I walk around with a lot of privilege in the world. I’m very aware of that. But this was a moment where it took me down.
Q: I know this film was a rush to the finish line because you were shooting the Supreme Court footage in December and had to get it ready in time for the Sundance premiere in January. And the film ends without the central U.S. v. Skrmetti case getting resolved. Did you always know that’s where the film would end?
Feder: As soon as I started the film, I knew we had to finish it in the hopes to premiere at Sundance 2025. I was never optimistic about the outcome of the election—I mean, I’m devastated, but I’m not surprised. So I felt this was the last chance to get this project out there and that the timing would be crucial for as many people to learn about the situation. We needed another way for people to understand the stakes, and so we couldn’t wait. Knowing the outcome was a dramatic end that wasn’t important.
Scholder: What was important for us was to have the film be out and available to be part of this conversation about what’s happening in this country. To understand that the stakes are high for trans people, but not only for trans people. This is chipping away at the rights of anybody’s bodily autonomy, with Roe v. Wade being overturned in the Supreme Court. So I think just understanding how we got here, that a case is going to the Supreme Court and that these nine human beings are deciding the fate of so many people’s rights to their own bodily autonomy, is kind of astonishing. Regardless of the outcome, the fact that we got to this point is historically and politically important to understand, especially in light of the kind of coalition building that has to happen.
Q: The film is still looking for U.S. distribution, and you’re traveling to a slew of festivals this month, most recently NewFest in New York. What has the experience been like sharing this film over the past several months as we’re starting to see the real impacts of the Trump Administration’s legislation?
Feder: Starting at Sundance, the impact on the audience was visceral. There was a young queer person at one of the screenings who asked a question and just burst into tears. Her question was: “We thought we were OK as queer, trans people. What do we do now?” At the same time, people were saying that they felt hopeful after the film, so that felt good because we didn’t want to only distress people. Having that sense of hope can embolden and inspire people to take action. And just this past Friday, we had my hometown screening in New York City and the audience was just with us the entire time, reacting and laughing at things that we didn’t know would even be funny. It blew my mind. It was a 500-seat theater, it was sold out with groups of young people, and our Q&A lasted an hour. It was thrilling because it meant people were ready for this and they need it. It was right of us to push it. It was right of us to screen it at Sundance because people need something to hold onto—they need the language, they need the information, they need each other. And in this space, all of that was really being nourished.
Scholder: That encapsulates my experience as well, and now we are one of many social justice documentary films that are not finding homes in these streamers and corporate studios that had, for a while, wanted to show our work. We’re, again, facing the reality of this shutting down of distribution opportunities for filmmakers’ work to be seen and discussed in as wide a public forum as we had enjoyed with Netflix for Disclosure. It’s disconcerting to be one of many films that gets into such a wonderful set of festivals, starting with Sundance, and then feels like there’s a blockage of support in corporate America to take on a film that certainly has an audience. It’s frightening. Of course, we will figure out alternative means as we artists have always had to do to distribute their films independently. But it’s disconcerting.