Beyond Boobs
52 min | Kristen Vermilyea & Stéphane Correa | 2016
First Hand Films (Switzerland), YUZU Productions
in coproduction with SRF, ARTE GEIE
in collaboration with YES DOCU, with the support of BAK & du CNC.
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World Sales:
FIRST HAND FILMS
Boobs. Melons. Bazookas: American director Kristen Vermilyea has large breasts, neck pain, back pain and balance issues.
Her decision to get a reduction triggers questions about identity, aging and bodies. Kristen departs on a series of wacky and humorous adventures before going under the knife.
After lugging the ‘girls’ around for more than 25 years, Kristen is ready to let them go. The decision to get the operation makes it obvious that her breasts are really much more than just a physical attribute – they have become a huge part of who Kristen is.
Beyond Boobs is a hilarious and at times provocative film about a middle-aged, American, single-mother living in Switzerland and her quest to find out if she’ll be invisible when she’s no longer the woman with the biggest breasts in the room.
As a TED-talker on the subject (“It’s Okay to Look”) and an artist, Kristen has long-been creating performance pieces with her breasts. Leaving these art experiments behind, she now embarks upon a real journey before she goes under the knife, and along the way encounters old lovers, family members, best friends and strangers and asks them, “Am I me, or am I my breasts?”
As she heads towards the inevitable and anticipated breast reduction surgery, she finds herself accepting the realities of her future existence – the new shape and size of her body – and realizing what she’d always hoped is actually true: we are not our bodies.