Neighbours Star & Trans Activist Georgie Stone Has A New Film About Her Life

Neighbours actress and transgender activist Georgie Stone will star in a new documentary that takes viewers on a journey through 19 years of her life. The film will feature memories of her as a trans-kid activist and showing her coming into adulthood affirming her gender identity. 

Titled The Dreamlife of Georgie Stone, the documentary premiered at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival and at the Sydney Film Festival earlier this year, and will be released worldwide on Netflix in September.

Stone was introduced as Neighbours’ first transgender character in a historic moment for Australian TV. She was the youngest child in Australia to receive hormone blockers at age 10 and was 14 when the documentary project first started filming under Maya Newell’s directorial vision. 

Maya Newell is known for her feature-length documentaries Gayby Baby (2015) and In My Blood It Runs (2019), with an eye for social justice and for filming through the lens of cultural commentary, highlighting stories about Indigenous culture, western society and now, trans people. 

Trans Experience Is Not Black-And-White,

In conversation with Screen Hub, Stone described the importance of taking agency over her own life and the privilege she had by being able to portray her journey. She says the journey began with her as a child feeling “so isolated and alone” where she transitioned into a young woman, and starting adulthood by “asserting control” over her life, body and story. 

Stone spoke about the importance of showing people what having a supportive family looked like, and what that network could do for a trans person. 

‘I want people to see the trans experience as not black-and-white, but nuanced and multi-faceted. It’s lonely and difficult, but also euphoric and beautiful too,” Stone said. 

She spoke of an urge to show other trans people that they “have a future” and of the vulnerabilities that were attached to both hearing and seeing other people’s experiences. 

Georgie Stone And Her Mother Rebekah Robertson Fought To Change Laws

The documentary celebrates the successful lobbying and advocacy done by Stone and her mother, Rebekah Robertson, who fought to change the law so that young trans people would no longer need to apply to the Family Court to undergo cross-sex hormone treatment.               

Stone told Perth Now that there was a gap in representation when it came to trans people, where there were more harmful stereotypes and cliched characters used in the media which she hoped to dispel.

“A lot of the stereotypes that were very prevalent where trans women grew up to be sex workers or in prison…and I couldn’t see a future for myself that was outside of that and that was very scary as a young person,” she said.

She added that the film was not a story that was reflective of all trans youth, noting that the experiences of trans people were “varied and expansive.” However, she hoped that this story would contribute to a “proliferation of narratives by trans youth about their lives that offer nuanced and multifaceted representations into the future.”