It's a community most people ridicule or prefer to keep at arm's length. But what does it mean to cross the gender divide, to be free of being male as society defines it?

That's the theme explored in the film Our Family.

A true story about a family of transgender women that unfolds over three generations.

The film's set in Tamil Nadu and tells the story of Aasha, Seetha and Dhana, who are bound together by ties of adoption.

Aasha is the grandmother, Seetha her adopted daughter and Dhana who is adopted by Seetha and her partner Selvam.

"We wanted to make a film which would question the way people look at the hijras. We wanted to look at the human rights violation, the stigmas and also look at the warmth and celebratory aspect of it," said Dr Anjali Monteiro, Filmmaker.

The film documents their journey as they discover their sexual identities and progressively blur the lines between themselves and what's seen as normal social behaviour.

"They become a regular family. So the woman Seetha does the cooking. She does assert herself but in trying to do so she asserts her womanly identity even more, one of the things that struck us was that they were normal but in trying to be normal they had to play out the politics of being normal in some sense," said K Jayanshanker, Filmmaker.

The film will not release commercially and will remain limited to the festival circuit. Clearly that's one barrier that will take some time crossing.