The Producers

T Cooper - Director/Producer

T Cooper is an award-winning filmmaker, best-selling novelist, journalist, and television writer-producer. He is the author of nine books, and Man Made is Cooper’s feature directorial debut. Man Made was a recipient of a Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program grant, and screened at more than 75 film festivals worldwide, winning more than a dozen Best Documentary and Audience awards. Cooper's first film, the animated short The Beaufort Diaries, premiered at SXSW and Tribeca in 2011. More info: www.t-cooper.com

Téa Leoni - Executive Producer

Téa Leoni is an actor, producer, activist, and philanthropist, who stars in and produces the hit CBS drama Madam Secretary. Leoni is a long-time member of the National Board of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, which her grandmother founded in 1947. Her commitment to social justice is life-long, and her passion for advocacy and equality extends to a strong support for transgender rights, which Leoni believes is one of the most pressing civil rights issues of our time.

Making The Film

Director's Statement

"I made this film is because I didn’t see my own story—my life, my body, my family, my identity—on-screen. Or if I did see transgender male lives portrayed, they were often caricature, side shows, or worse, focused on what makes us (and keeps us) different and apart, as opposed to what makes us as human and recognizable as anybody else. I felt compelled to document and celebrate the trans lives I knew, to provide a counter-narrative to the common conceit that trans people are a problem to be overcome. I felt it imperative to show a full range of trans male life experience—from the inside looking out, rather than from the outside looking in.

Since its completion, Man Made has been embraced by audiences with uncommon passion. That is partly because of the generosity of my subjects and the trust we shared born of common experience, and partly because Man Made reveals not just what it means to be a transgender man, but what it means to be alive. At a time when civil rights for LGBTQ people (and so many others of difference) are being attacked and rolled back at alarming rates, I believe that this project and ones like it are more vital than ever. That if we insist on continuing to tell our stories, it will be harder and harder to erase us. Man Made is my story. But it is also the story of anybody who has done what it takes to become the person s/he is meant to be."