By Kalki Subramaniam
‘Untold’ is a story of the filmmaker’s struggles with her body, her gender, her life as a transgender woman in finding a dignified and respectable space in the society and her successes and failures, her joys and pains, her pride and hope in her life as an activist from 2008 to 2021 - 13 years.
During her early years of activism in Chennai in 2010, she met Sowmya, a 24-year-old transgender girl. One day, she hung herself and committed suicide. The following year Kalki lost another friend, Mariya to murder, and Seema to AIDS. The deaths of Maria, Seema and Sowmya affected her deeply and she was in a traumatic state for two years. It broke something inside her. It took her a long time to resurrect herself and fight again for the community. Their stories are weaved within her story. Along with her stories of friendships and losses, she wanted to elaborate and emotionally narrate about her gender reassignment surgery, her friends who held her strong, her advocacy with the Supreme Court judiciary for legalising transgender identity and her exploration and extension of her personality as an artist and a poet. Through her fascinating and sensitive story, she wants to inspire the audience and relate her struggles with their own.