The Danish Girl, a story known to few

U.K. film director Tom Hooper always strives to bring littleknown stories to a wider audience in his films, which he has achieved in his 2015 motion picture ‘The Danish Girl’, starring British actor Eddie Redmayne, who plays the character of Danish painter Einar Wegener, who was the firstever individual to undergo sex realignment surgery.

‘The Danish Girl’ is a film whose director and cast, including Redmayne and Swedish actress Alicia Vikander, seek to shed some light on transgender people, who still suffer from social problems in the 21st century, similar to the issues they faced during the beginning of the 20th century, in which the movie’s events take place.

In press statements following its release at the Venice Film Festival, Redmayne said there is still a long way to go and a lot of work to do for transgender people to be accepted, believing that their situation remains unchanged in some parts of the world, where they are attacked and subjected to all kinds of humiliation.

Redmayne stars in ‘The Danish Girl’ as Danish painter Einar Wegener, who became a transgender woman and renamed herself Lili Elbe.

The character was a prominent painter in the 1920s, who started to feel that he was actually a woman, so decided to undergo sex realignment surgery despite being married to fellow Danish painter Gerda Wegener, depicted in the movie by actress Alicia Vikander.

Shot in a beautiful classical style, director Tom Hooper tells the story of the change from Einar to Lili, and the search for the woman inside him.

The movie will premiere this week in theatres in Spain and Mexico, and later in February in Argentina, Chile and Brazil.

Redmayne has expressed his hopes that the movie will contribute positively to the struggle of transgender people in order to claim their full rights; an idea shared by Hooper, who stressed that the whole process was a tough journey for the Danish painter, during a time when homosexuality and transsexuality were regarded with disgust and horror.

The movie highlights that the Danish painter was lucky to meet Gerda, his wife and an early feminist who was ready to accept the transformation.

Alicia Vikander and Eddie Redmayne have been nominated for their roles in the movie for several awards, including the Golden Globes, and they will be waiting to find out if they have been nominated for Oscars, which will be announced on Thursday.

Last year, Eddie Redmayne received the Academy award for Best Actor for playing the character of theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking in the 2014 British biographical drama film, “The Theory of Everything.”