Up at 6:00 again to get in from Salt Lake for the doc Be Like Others, about transsexuals in Iran. A remarkable fact about Iran: though homosexuality is illegal and punishable by death, sex-change operations are not. As a cleric points out, though the Koran specifically forbids homosexual practices, it remains silent on gender-reassignment surgery. (Imagine!) So you find that gay people in Iran, whether they identify as another gender or not, sign up for these surgeries simply to stay alive.

The film itself does not try to untangle all the complications of this situation, it only presents them, mainly through following its main subjects as they navigate the different stages of their gender reassignments. All the main characters in the film are male-to-female transsexuals, though the filmmaker pointed out afterwards that about 40% of the surgeries are female-to-male: it’s simply that the women awaiting surgery are more reluctant to draw attention to themselves because once the surgery is done, often you can’t tell that they ever were women and they can more easily slip into society. The men who become women are more obvious, so they have less to expose by participating in a documentary. The film itself is very simply edited, without much score, and is mostly told through interview or observing conversations. But the compelling story outshines its humble presentation. Ultimately it’s very sad.

In the afternoon, we screened Flow again. This would be the last time I’d be able to participate in Q&A so I was sure to get there early. I sent Heath inside, checked sound levels, then hung out with Yvette and Katie and cinematographer Pablo de Silva in the Green Room until we were called. Irena and producers Steven Starr and Gill Holland came in right at the end from distributor meetings—can’t wait to hear how all those are going! We were in Library Center Theater, one of the larger cinemas in the festival with around 480 seats, and it was packed. When we walked in over our credit roll we noticed that not many people were leaving, and the theater was simply buzzing with conversation: the room felt alive. When Irena was introduced, the applause was deafening: a standing ovation! We heard from the Library Center manager that she’d seen all the screenings in that theater, and this was the first ovation. It was very moving. We had another great Q&A, hands shooting up all over the room. One of the highlights of our Q&A is when we brought William Marks, one of our main subjects and water experts, down to answer questions. They treated him like a movie star! Which of course now he is. He was doing a book signing that night, for his collection “Water Voices.” I hope everyone in that Q&A went down to Dolly’s to grab his book.

What’s interesting about our screenings is that the audiences don’t have the usual technical film festival questions about budget and shoot dates and distribution plans. They want to talk about water: what’s wrong with it, who’s after it, and what they can do to protect it. It’s extremely heartening to participate in these discussions. You feel like you’re really providing a forum for people to start thinking about these issues and start to take action. We hope that our website will be a central location for people to go and research the issues further and figure out how to help solve this water crisis.

After the film the sky was pouring out snow. It seemed fitting to be in that deluge after our thrilling town meeting indoors, and we took a picture of our team with draped arms around each other. And then I ran away from my Sundance experience on that high. Heath and I had one more set of tickets for that night—American Son, a drama about a soldier about to be deployed in Iraq—but the with the snow we wanted to get to Salt Lake before dark.

So Thursday night I found myself on a plane to LA, leaving Sundance behind. It was a great experience. FLOW didn’t come away with any major awards, but we’re thrilled about all the attention it got, and really feel that it will start to change minds and actions, bit by bit. I can’t wait to see it going to theaters around the country. We really want to get the word out.

It’s been great blogging this (though sporadic internet access hindered the real-time effect…); hope you enjoyed it.