Review by Arthur Sopin LET US BE

There is a quiet, almost sacred moment in LET US BE when the conversation drifts away from politics and medicine into something far more intimate: childhood. That fragile early awareness of growing up with the sense that others — parents, doctors, teachers — already understood your body better than you ever could. Learning, often before language could contain it, that certain parts of yourself required explanation before they could be granted acceptance.

This tender exchange sits at the emotional heart of Viviane D’Avilla’s sensitive and profoundly humane documentary. Leaving Vue Piccadilly yesterday evening and stepping back into the restless energy of London’s West End — past evening commuters with headphones pressed tight, the vibrant mosaic of faces flowing towards the Tube, the layered conversations spilling from Soho cafés — I felt the film’s quiet power settle deeply within me.

On the surface, LET US BE traces the lives of intersex individuals across Brazil, India, and the United States. It confronts, with unflinching clarity, the ongoing reality of non-consensual surgeries performed on intersex children, while thoughtfully examining broader questions of bodily autonomy, identity, and human rights. Yet the film’s greatest triumph is its refusal to reduce its subjects to medical cases or ideological symbols.

Instead, it reveals them as fully realised, complex individuals. Activists, educators, parents and community leaders — such as Hida Viloria, Lyss Ball, Carolina Iara and Aanandha Rajappan — emerge as people who work, fall in love, raise families, argue over dinner tables, and carry the ordinary weight of daily life alongside their deeper struggles. Their stories feel both singular and achingly universal: the exhaustion of constantly explaining oneself, the quiet longing for belonging, and the resilience demanded by a world eager to categorise.

As someone who often contemplates these themes while navigating the multicultural rhythms of contemporary London — where disparate worlds collide daily on the Northern Line or in the bustling corners of Soho — I was particularly struck by D’Avilla’s admirable directorial restraint. She favours patient observation over polemic, allowing her participants to speak in their own unhurried voices. The camera listens with genuine respect. In our sharply polarised public discourse, this approach feels both radical and necessary: it prioritises human encounter over ideological victory.

The film’s international architecture allows shared questions to resonate across continents: Who decides what is “normal”? Who truly owns the body? What are the human costs when institutions impose irreversible decisions upon children? LET US BE offers no simplistic resolutions — and is all the more intellectually honest and emotionally powerful for that restraint.

The most affecting scenes are often the quietest: family conversations, resurfacing childhood memories, and moments of shared humour among those who have long navigated misunderstanding. These remind us that exclusion is rarely abstract theory; it is lived intimately, in homes, schools, and hospital rooms.

In an era of rigid certainties and performative declarations, LET US BE makes an elegant yet urgent case for curiosity and expanded attention. It does not ask us to abandon our beliefs, but to enlarge them — to recognise the full, breathing person behind every category.

I watched the film yesterday at Vue Piccadilly as part of the Raindance Film Festival. It was touching, energetic, and brilliantly told, with an inspiring Q&A with the team afterwards.

Highly recommended.