Tal Como Somos - Just As We Are

Look for this at a film festival or on cable - coming soon!

Latinos Facing Stigma

In a culture celebrated for its rich traditions, close-knit families, and strong faith, being Latino and gay, bi-sexual, or transgender is often unmentionable—and frequently unforgivable.

Tal Como Somos (Just as we are) shares the realities of living within a culture where daily life means being torn between love as son, brother, father, friend and stigma, or even exclusion, for being different. This feature length documentary (click here to learn more and to view the trailer) candidly examines the lives of six Latino men, one transgender woman, and the ties that bind them: their families and friends, their culture, religion, education/upbringing, and their experiences as adults. The film showcases their ordinariness and uniqueness while revealing their human-ness as individuals who live and love, wanting to live and be loved for who they are.

In Chicago: Meet Gus and Marcelo, a driven young Mexican couple whose love unites them despite a conflict over faith and a church that rejects them.

In Washington D.C: Meet Gabriella, once a boy who was repeatedly ridiculed, has spent a lifetime proving to her Mexican family and herself that she’s worthy of acceptance as a woman. Now a substance abuse survivor and happily married, she works with Ernesto, a Venezuelan who fled everything he knew, still struggling to find a way to tell his family he’s living in America as an HIV-positive bi-sexual man.

In New York: David, Columbian and single, buries his past with a new life in lower Manhattan, finding comfort in friends, purpose in work, and residual pain in confronting the humiliation of being branded "gay-boy" since grade school.

In San Francisco: Oscar, the only son of Cuban immigrant parents, is learning to navigate family and societal contradictions. In the same city, Dusty, a long-married Panamanian parent to two adopted children, narrates and interweaves their stories from a place of wise experience.

Tal Como Somos reveals how negative experiences at home, school, and with religious beliefs have impacted each person and their view of themselves. Produced in equal parts Spanish and English, and intended for audiences ages fourteen through adult, the documentary openly confronts the deep scars that stigmatization can leave upon one’s psyche; scars that take extraordinary strength of character and internal power to overcome in order to find balance and peace in life. Each individual contributes a personal perspective on what it means to be bisexual, gay, queer, or transgender. Together they express the good, the not-so-good, the challenges, and the successes that have brought them to where they are today. Tal Como Somos shares their laughter, their tears, and their hopes while promoting awareness and understanding.

Learn more.