Photo courtesy of HBO

The Trans List is the latest in a series of documentaries by acclaimed photographer and director Timothy Greenfield-Sanders. Like his previous films, which include The Black List, The Latino List, and The OUT List, The Trans List features a sincere, straightforward style of interviewing, giving a platform for people to share their life stories in their own voices. 

From Bamby Salcedo (activist and founder of the TransLatin@ Coalition), to Caitlyn Jenner, Laverne Cox, Shane Ortega (U.S. Army Staff Sergeant), Nicole Maines (advocate, actor, and student), Miss Major Griffin-Gracy (advocate and community leader), Kylar Broadus (civil rights attorney), Amos Mac (photographer), Caroline Cossey (model), and Alok Vaid-Menon (writer, poet, and performance artist), each shares their personal story in detail, describing in their own words their relationships with identity, family, career, struggle, and achievement.

Janet Mock, TV host, journalist, advocate, and author of The New York Times bestselling memoir Redefining Realness: A Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love, and So Much More, co-produced the film and interviews each of the documentary’s eleven cast members, intimately from behind-the-camera. 

On why people should watch, Alok Vaid-Menon told GLAAD:

“In a media moment saturated by cisgender people telling transgender stories it feels really exciting and beautiful to have trans people telling our own stories. What the film shows is that there is no “one” trans narrative. We are all extraordinarily different and have different ideas about what gender even is! This film really complicates the idea that there’s only one way to be trans. […] I hope people take away that there are as many trans narratives as there are trans people — that each of us is extraordinarily complex and unique. This film is bringing trans and gender non-conforming life to a wide audience so I hope that people will be confronted with ideas and narratives that they’ve never considered before.”

Coming soon: read more of GLAAD’s interviews with Alok, Amos Mac, and Bamby Salcedo about their experiences participating in the documentary. 

The film’s journey into each person’s life are short, but the sophisticated nature of the interviews, guided by Mock, render each person’s life so sharply and specifically that their stories become relatable and universal. 

The Trans List premieres December 5 at 8 pm ET on HBO.

Through February 2017, The Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles is hosting IDENTITY: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders The List Portraits, a special exhibition where portraits of people from The Trans List and several additional trans people photographed by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, may be seen alongside portraits of people featured in The Black List, The Latino List, The Women’s List, and The Out List. 

The gallery is also inviting some of the subjects from the photos to give lectures in conjunction with the exhibit, and making them available to view online. Currently you can watch lectures by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, Alok Vaid-Menon, and the director of GLAAD’s Transgender Media Program, Nick Adams. Upcoming will be lectures from Bamby Salcedo, Nicole Maines and her father, and Zackary Drucker and Rhys Ernst.

A paperback book version of The Trans List portraits and interviews is available for purchase on Amazon.