Hairon lives in an ordinary Danish subdivision in an ordinary provincial town. But there’s nothing ordinary about Hairon. We see that from the opening shot. Tough and vulnerable at once, the Danish-Brazilian boy stands before the bathroom mirror, draining a can of hairspray into his styled hairdo. His lips are bright with pink lip-gloss and he waves his long arms with feminine grace.
"Above all, the film is about being a teenager, facing resistance - and about the need to feel loved."
Hairon isn’t ordinary, that much is clear to himself and his surroundings. Never more so than the day his stepfather takes him fishing. Looking like a pretty odd bird, in his waders and fishing gear, Hairon pesters his dad for a pair of Dior sunglasses costing more than 250 euros. His dad smiles and says, ”There are times when I feel like you aren’t living in the real world.”
Hairon’s story has become a film, "Let’s Be Together". It all began when the Bastard Film production company asked Nanna Frank Møller to do a portrait of this Danish-Brazilian boy with a penchant for women’s clothing, and the director was soon fascinated by the unusual kid who dared to stick out. “Portraying someone this young, it’s important to find out why he wants to be in the film. He told me that he wanted people to know what it feels like to be him. Acknowledging the feelings inside of him takes courage, and I respected him for that,” Frank Møller says.
Deciding to build the film around a meeting of father and son, the director followed Hairon when he left for Brazil to be reunited with his biological father after a separation of nearly four years. “I had to find a filmic frame, and I was looking for a universal story that everybody could mirror themselves in,” Frank Møller says. “Hairon hadn’t seen his biological father since he was 11 years old, and I imagined there’d be a compelling story in their meeting.”
And right she was. In a low-key, discreet fashion the film tracks Hairon’s journey from his everyday life in Denmark to Vitória, Brazil, where his father is somewhat taken aback by his son, who no longer wants to be a boy and is exploring an ambiguous territory in between genders. As it turns out, his father, too, has a history of gender issues. After a dramatic argument between father and son, his father steps up as a strong, attentive figure who helps Hairon on the road to self-understanding.
The film is bursting with samba, drag costumes and fiery Brazilian outbursts of emotion – but behind all that, "Let’s Be Together", more than anything, is a universal story about going through a time in life that’s tough for everyone. Tougher, no doubt, for Hairon, struggling with issues of gender identity. As Frank Møller puts it, “Above all, the film is about being a teenager, facing resistance – and about the need to feel loved.”
