Born to Be Human () is a 2021 Taiwanese drama film with LGBTQ+ themes, written and directed by Lily Ni. The film follows the story of an adolescent intersex boy, Shi-Nan, and explores themes of medical violence and gender identity. For her performance in the lead role, Ling-Wei Lee won the Yakushi Pearl Award at the Osaka Asian Film Festival 2021, where the film premiered.
Since September 2024, the film has been available on the YouTube channel of Lily Ni—the film's writer and director.
Plot
Shi-Nan appears to be an ordinary 14-year-old—he plays video games obsessively and bristles when his mother calls for him while he's masturbating. His life shatters when severe abdominal pain strikes, followed by blood in his urine. Initially dismissed as an infection, medical tests later reveal Shi-Nan has a disorder of sex development: he is intersex, with outwardly male anatomy but internal female reproductive organs (including ovaries and a uterus), a condition that remained undetected until that point.
Under pressure from the doctor and social stigma, Shi-Nan's parents consent to irreversible genital surgery without his informed consent, intending to "normalize" his body to match his XX chromosomes. When Shi-Nan awakens from the procedure, he finds himself forcibly redesignated as female and renamed Shi-Lan. The film traces his traumatic struggle to reconcile societal expectations with his own fractured sense of self, exposing the harms of non-consensual intersex medical interventions.
Cast Ling-Wei Lee as Shi-Nan/Shi-Lan (credited as Lily Lee) Vera Chen as Chen Jie Chao-te Yin as Lee Pei-Rui (credited as Yin Jau Der) Yao-Jen Chang as PE teacher Yang Chen as Hsu Jui Cheng-Mei Chuang as Hsu Tien (credited as Mu Mei) Alice Lee as Dr. Lee's mom Hsing-Wen Li as Yang Guo-Ying Zi-Cheng Li as Old school bully Bonnie Liang as Chang Tian-Qi Yu-Hsien Lin as Ko Hao (credited as Mo-Cheng Lin) Hsiao-yuan Wang as Liu Cho-Sung Frances Wu as Ku Shu-Chuan Chung-Min Yin as Wang Wei
Reception Ling-Wei Lee (credited as Lily Lee) won the Yakushi Pearl Award at the Osaka Asian Film Festival for her role in the film.
References
External links