Netflix & Director Spar Over Underage Nude Scene for Trans Drama 'Girl'

Netflix picked up the film "Girl," which debuted at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival in May, but the streaming company and the director are butting heads over a controversial scene that apparently shows frontal nudity of film's star, a 15-year-old boy, according to a report by The Hollywood Reporter.

"Girl" is filmmaker's Lukas Dhont's directorial debut that is about a transgender girl training to become a ballerina. After it premiered in Cannes and earned four awards, including the Queer Palm for best LGBTQ film and the Fipresci Prize in the Un Certain Regard competition, Netflix bought the film. But now "Girl," which is Belgium's official entry into Oscar's foreign-language race, is sparking up some controversy after Dhont made comments that Netflix plans to edit out a scene with full frontal nudity of its star, who was 15 during filming.

But it looks like Dhont may have changed his mind, according to a statement he gave via Netflix to THR.

"Regarding reports made this week in the Belgian media, we as filmmakers had some internal conversations with Netflix in which we discussed how some of the material in 'Girl' could possibly be received outside of Europe," he said. "We were given the option to be able to edit the film, and it always was a dialogue in which the filmmakers had the strongest say. The version of 'Girl' that will be shown on Netflix will be the same version that premiered in Cannes, and in theaters in Belgium and other parts of the world."

This isn't the first time "Girl" has made headlines. Jezebel was critical of Dhont for not choosing a trans actor for the role of Lara. In an interview with The Wrap, the young filmmaker Sid he auditioned about 500 actors and dancers for the part before picking Victor Polster, a trained dancer.

"I feel like I should be really mad about him casting Polster because it's like the millionth time this has happened and having cis men play trans women or vice-versa (Scarlett Johansson, Matt Bomer, Elle Fanning, Jeffrey Tambor...) implies that we'll always be our birth gender no matter what we say or do, an idea that even the Trump administration has seemingly endorsed in recent weeks, yadda yadda yadda," Jezebel's Harron Walker wrote last month. "But mostly I'm just curious about what drew the director to the project in the first place."

Read the full piece by clicking here and watch the trailer for "Girl" below. It's unclear when Netflix will release "Girl" in the U.S.