Changing the Game

The documentary Changing the Game (2019) was co-written and directed by Michael Barnett.

The movie stars Mack Beggs, Sarah Rose Huckman, and Andraya Yearwood. All three of them are transgender high-school athletes with enormous talent.

As expected, these young men and women face opposition from officials and parents of the athletes against whom they compete. The film shows us how they confront this additional burden, and deal with it in successful ways.

It's not easy. One athlete takes testosterone to achieve physical gender change. Of course, testosterone is a banned substance for athletes. He's not taking it to win at sports--it's part of his medical regimen. That's an inherently difficult situation.

This movie hasn't achieved wide distribution. My vote is only the 14th vote, and I'm the first person to review if for IMDb. I hope that distributors will pick up on this movie. Obviously, it will work at LGBT festivals, but I think it will also work well for general audiences.

We say this film in The Little Theatre, as part of the excellent ImageOut Rochester LGBT Film Festival. It will work well on the small screen. This is a movie that will make you think. I recommend it.

I don't care about sports "fairness," & I don't prescribe to outdated gender normativity. Why bother separating athletics based on gender at all? Place individuals based on their qualifications. Is it not that simple? Regardless, thinking that dehumanizes people is inexcusable, & movies like this teach us to treat these teens with respect, care, & love. Maybe allowing children to make permanent changes to their bodies before their brains are fully developed is a gray area...being relentlessly kind to children isn't.

This movie brings out the sense of humanity behind a dehumanizing social aspect.

It brings the subject into first person. We don't listen about it from the news, or the media message, we see the actual subjects behind the matter. The do so in such a way that you can feel the being behind the matter.

Didn't give the 10 because I wish they would offer more the medical and mental aspects to the matter, but that is just a door left for other documentaries to be created.

Very moving. :)

It does not even pretend to be unbiased. This movie presents only one side of the narrative for the majority of the movie. There are bits of the opposite argument, but never does it give them proper time nor does it answer any of the arguments presented.

Other than that there were no science-based explanations and nothing new is presented in this documentary. So, It wasn't very informative.

3 stars only cause the movie was shot well and it humanises the trans athletes and try to give a glimpse into their lives.

When I started to see this film, I did not know that it was a documentary, nor that its theme was discrimination against transgender people, I found myself seeing a problem that I was unaware of, and it made me think about all that we still need to learn, understand and to improve as human beings. I would like films like this to be presented in public schools in all countries in order to educate the future of the world, because I consider that like all cinematographic work its objective should be to transmit something: an emotion, an idea or a problem and Changing The Game achieves it. At least I feel that I have grown as a person.