Synopsis
 Twenty-six-year-old Madison is in the process of becoming a girl and Vivien, her glamourous, apple-martini-drinking 80-year-old grandmother, has taken on the job of advising her on all things feminine. Filmed over three years, and culminating in Madison’s sex reassignment surgery, Madison\'s gender metamorphosis unfolds as a journey of self-discovery with several surprises along the way. Madison’s family in rural New Brunswick struggle to accept her new role as a daughter instead of a son, and a sister instead of a brother.
 
 Program Note
 Portraying a 26-year-old transwoman Madison during three years, Girl Inside is a documentary about a series of her changes made by hormone therapy and surgery. Watching those physical changes, Madison’s eightyyear-old grandmother Vivien teaches her all things feminine in her own way. Vivien’s schooling which emphasizes old-fashioned feminity in gait, accessories and hair style seems excessive to Madison and it is sometimes in conflict with Madison’s way of discovering womanhood in her own light. The juxtaposition of the two women, vastly different from each other in generation and experiences, raises profound issues about the meaning of gender, feminity and sexuality. Following Madison’s physical transformation, the documentary tracks the journey of her emotional and spiritual changes, while simultaneously delicately capturing how her family deals with the sexual transition from male to female. Sometimes she is hurt by the question “do you really want to be transsexual” repetitiously put to her by outsiders, as well as being hurt by numerous doubts she casts on herself. Other times she is engrossed by the desire to look like not a transsexual but a “normal” woman. Madison’s passion, effort, and pain to “pass” as a woman, to become a “normal” woman, concomitantly raises questions about the way that society understands transgender and about categories that differentiate “normal” from “abnormal”: who is the so-called “normal” woman? As Madison’s father says, we all change in our own journey of life and undergo self-transformation in whatever shape; and so does Madison. In this sense, Girl Inside is a film about self-determination, transformation, and the pursuit of happiness. (HONG So-in)