XXY (film)

XXY (film)

XXY is a 2007 Argentine film written and directed by Lucía Puenzo. The film stars Ricardo Darín, Valeria Bertuccelli, Inés Efron and Martín Piroyansky. It tells the story of a 15-year-old intersex person, the way her family copes with her condition and the ultimate decision that she must eventually make as she finds her gender identity.

XXY has received widespread critical acclaim, winning the Critics' Week grand prize at the 2007 Cannes film festival, as well as the ACID/CCAS Support Award. It was nominated for eight awards at the 2008 Argentine Film Critics Association Awards, winning three of them including Best Film, and was nominated or won awards at a number of other foreign film festivals. It was chosen to close the 2008 Melbourne Queer Film Festival. It is distributed within the UK by Peccadillo Pictures, it had a short run theatrical release before being released onto DVD.

At first sight the film's title appears to be a reference to Klinefelter's syndrome, also known as XXY syndrome, a condition in which males have an extra X sex chromosome. This would be highly misleading, as the character is referred to as being "intersex" and has female and male genitalia. Those affected with Klinefelter's syndrome do not fit the condition portrayed in this film. In fact, the film title as shown on screen and in original advertising is not actually XXY - but XX followed by a fractured X - not a Y.