Heightened Scrutiny | Screening January 20, 6:30 p.m. | The Carolina Theatre, Durham
Heightened Scrutiny, a new documentary out from director Sam Feder, begins by dropping viewers into the tense moments before Chase Strangio, the first openly transgender attorney to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court, takes the stand to defend the use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy for trans minors in Tennessee.
The 2024 case, United States v. Skrmetti, is one of many that have determined the legality of gender-affirming care for minors on the basis of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. Since 2021, 27 states have banned this care for trans minors.
Heightened Scrutiny features several interviews with journalists and trans advocates. There’s also Mila, a young trans girl from New York City navigating life as her school enacts anti-trans policies. The documentary also turns a critical eye to how media coverage of trans people impacts policy, analyzing coverage from The New York Times and other major outlets. The conclusion? There are more headlines dangerous for trans people than there are headlines that explore the dangers trans people face.
“The coverage is creating the law,” Strangio says, early into the film.
The documentary depicts Strangio’s life as he preps for the biggest moment of his career—an argument in the nation’s highest courtroom, as the 2024 presidential election spins in the background. Heightened Scrutiny will have a local screening on January 20 at 6:30 p.m. at The Carolina Theatre. Ahead of the Durham screening, the INDY spoke with Feder about media criticism, the 2024 election, and what they hope people will take away from the film. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
INDY: Can you tell me a little bit about the origins of Heightened Scrutinyand how you got involved with the project?
SAM FEDER: I saw this clip that is in Heightened Scrutiny, in The Daily Wire, where Michael Knowles talks about how he wants to eradicate trans people from the face of the Earth, and the camera pans across the audience, and everyone was clapping. And that was a moment for me, where, usually, I’m pretty thick-skinned, [but] that scared me—to actually see the people who would support that kind of comment.
A couple months after that was I was working on a TV set. It was a queer, trans television show, and a senior crew member was striking up a conversation with me, [saying things like], ‘Well, maybe, there are too many rights. Maybe the children don’t know what they’re doing.’ And, you know, ‘The parents are just getting pressured’—like, this woman was just spewing: ‘It’s a social contagion, it’s dangerous.’ In that moment, I was shocked for so many reasons. One, like, why is she talking to me about this? Two, this is a show about queer and trans people. Does she not realize that this is a problematic conversation to have? And three: She was just spewing all the talking points I had only heard in the right wing.
I started hearing more people that thought of themselves as allies quoting The New York Times. That’s when I realized—Ok, I have, for decades, been critical of The New York Times, but really couldn’t get people who were outside of my bubble to understand. But with this issue, I could really get people to understand because I know this one inside and out. I became politicized around The New York Times with the invasion of Iraq, right after 9/11, when I started to understand that The New York Times had a very questionable bias. So that’s why I made the film, because I really wanted to show people the ways in which they had been potentially manipulated by the mainstream media to become skeptical around our access to human rights.
What was it like documenting Chase’s journey before the oral arguments of the Supreme Court?
It was a real honor that he wanted to do it. You know, it was a decision we came to together. We had known each other for a while, and he was part of the film when we started production, when we started interviews in March of 2024. So he already knew about the film, I’d interviewed him. When it was announced that he was going to be leading the oral arguments, we started talking about documenting that experience and why we wanted to document that experience.
I felt honored and excited. And then I felt held back because I really didn’t want to infringe upon his time, because I knew how stressed he was. I didn’t want to add any stress to his life. So I followed his lead and the people around him, his closest friends, and where they thought we should film. It was great insight into the process of preparing for a court case. I felt it was really important that we understand the toll it takes on the human as well, preparing for that case.
Can you tell me a little bit about how you decided to structure the documentary and include Mila as a character in it?
From the beginning, I knew there had to be a central voice of trans young people. I didn’t know exactly how to do that, because I have a lot of concern about putting a young person on camera, but this whole backlash has been in the name of young people, and they have not been given a voice. It felt really important to me to give a voice to trans adolescents. I couldn’t really figure out the most ethical way to do it. We played around with different ideas that just didn’t land well, and we had been following along a few different stories.
But like with Chase, it just organically happened with Mila. I’d been going to these school board meetings, like the one you see in the movie, I’d been going to them for maybe two or four months preceding that moment. And the day I went to the [school board meeting], you see, I wasn’t filming it for the film—I was filming it just as someone where I was like, ‘This needs to be documented, right? My friends in Brooklyn don’t understand that this is happening in Manhattan. They think it’s happening everywhere else in the country, but not in Manhattan, not in New York.’
As I’m going through the crowd, Mila comes towards me very proudly and, just with the most self-confidence I’ve seen in most humans, and tells me that I have her permission to film her. She just came right out and made it clear that she was born to be on camera—which she is. I saw her speak that day and met her mom, and then it turned out that both she and her mom already had a pre-existing relationship and connection with Chase. So after many conversations to make sure this was safe and ethical for the family and for Mila, we decided to go forward.
A case heard at the Supreme Court on Tuesday indicated that the court will likely rule to uphold laws preventing trans women and girls from competing on women’s sports teams. How do you think media coverage has impacted this kind of anti-trans legislation and rulings?
I mean, entirely. I think this entire moment around the politics around our lives is completely based on the amplification of the skepticism from the coverage of our lives, right? All of it has contributed to this very dangerous environment where discriminatory legislation thrives, right? Our rights being up for debate is grounded in popular culture, mainstream media, and social media, and you hear it in the voices of the judges when they’re asking questions. In Heightened Scrutiny, we pull out the audio clips of [the justices] asking questions and responding, and you hear the bias and how it’s directly parroting what we read in mainstream media.
The documentary touches on the 2024 presidential election. How did that play in with the message of hope that the documentary ends on?
I think all of that combined reminds us that our ability to survive doesn’t begin and end with the law and politics, and it never has. Neither the law nor politics have been kind to any marginalized community, let alone queer and trans people. And while we have to put up a good fight, there’s also many, many other ways that we need to fight in order to survive, and most of that is about protecting and supporting each other.
What kinds of conversations do you hope that Heightened Scrutiny creates?
I hope it creates conversations around how critical it is to be critical of the media; how important it is to be engaged in critical thinking and critical reading practices, for people to understand not only the harm that trans people are facing, but how that’s going to affect everybody. These cases are setting a precedent to chip away at other people’s rights. For example, in the Skrmetti case, at the bottom of it, the right to privacy between a patient and a doctor was being thwarted. So that will set the ground for the right of privacy for anyone and their doctor—trans, not trans.
Part of what I am beating the drum for is to show people that the reality in which these sayings, like, ‘You come for me in the morning, we’re coming for you in the night,’—that is so true. All the attacks that we’re getting individually are attacking each other, and so that feels really vital for me, for people to walk away with.
Heightened Scrutiny focuses on the media coverage of trans people and how it shapes the law. How have you experienced that in your life, particularly as a trans filmmaker?
As a filmmaker, it kind of comes back to that story I was telling about why I made the film to begin with. Like in my workplace, people were starting to question trans people’s rights. That was one very direct way. I haven’t experienced the worst of what many people are experiencing. I haven’t lost access to my medical care yet, but the practitioners that I work with are very concerned about it. So there’s that stress always in the background.
Personally, while I experience the stress of the atmosphere and fear, I’m OK right now—though, I have wondered, when will I know that it’s time that I have to leave? I don’t want to leave now because there are so many other communities in addition to trans people that I am trying to fight for and fight with.
What have we not gotten to talk about that’s on your mind?
Distribution. No one bought the film out of Sundance. No one bought the film many months out of Sundance, and some films choose to wait, and maybe they’ll wait a year, and maybe they’ll wait two years, and then they’ll get bought. But that means it wasn’t really seen as much over that time—and there was no way I was going to take that risk because this was an urgent story. I needed as many people to see it before the case to understand what was at stake.
And so we just pivoted to self-distribution, very, very, very quickly, which is really hard when you’re a small team of three people, as opposed to when Netflix picks up your film for distribution. Then they’ve got millions and millions of dollars to support your film, which they did do for our last film—though, just so people know, we did not get paid well—but the film, Disclosure, did get a lot of exposure because it was on Netflix. Heightened Scrutiny has done well, I’m very pleased. We’ve had over 150 screenings, we’ve had a great theatrical—we’re having a great educational run. The festival run was fantastic, but there’s only so long we can keep that up as a small team. Our capacity, our money, our time, our resources are very limited, so our self-distribution push is probably only going to last until this June.
If we were on a major streamer, the film would continue to be shown to millions of people. But I don’t know what’s going to happen when I stop this push. When we spoke with buyers, initially, they were saying, ‘The film’s too political,’ it was too politically sensitive for their platform. I wasn’t surprised. I think what I was surprised at is how honest they were.
It’s really meaningful to know that the film is getting out there, but our life is going to be limited because we don’t have distribution. It’s a larger conversation around the distribution market, where it’s going for filmmakers—and, in particular, for social justice films, the gatekeeping is really supporting the government. They’re really bowing to the administration.
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