When I was a boy, I was a girl

Goca is a transvestite in Belgrade, the capital city of a country where organizing or participating in a gay pride parade is forbidden. She is raising a daughter who is actually her niece. Although her eighteen year old boyfriend steals the money she risks life and limb to earn as a sex worker, Goca still loves him and manages to retain her sunny, open-minded nature. 

On her thirty-ninth birthday she decides to celebrate her coming-out on stage in front of a live audience. And so she tells them the story of her life: “When I was a boy, I was a girl."The text in this cabaret was written by Goca herself, and playwright Olga Dimitrijević. Few months after film was made Goca started to work as an activist for transsexual issue in Serbia, she left sex work and still search her soul mate.

Biography:

Ivana was born in Belgrade in 1979. She was awarded several times as a director, cinematographer and producer of a social documentary. Her films have been screened at festivals such as the Berlinale, Rotterdam, Palm Springs, Traverse City Festival (famous director Michael Moore). She also won awards on festivals in Russia, USA, Serbia, Italy and Canada. Also, some of her films were used as part of a campaign to fight youth violence in New York and within classes of civic education in Serbia. Ivana Todorovic lives and works in Belgrade and New York.

Filmography:

Represent (doc. short, 2008) • A Harlem Mother (video doc. short, 2009) • Ja, kada sam bila klinac, bila sam klinka (doc. short, 2013)