It’s 1941, in the rural South, and in the local hospital a farming couple is told their newborn baby is intersex, meaning it has the reproductive organs – and will display specific traits – of both sexes.

In reality, approximately 1.7 percent of children are born intersex.

In Mistake, premiering Friday (March 5) at the Gasparilla Film Festival in Tampa, the Bensons are told they must “choose” whether their child is a boy or girl. At the father’s insistence, the baby is a “he,” to be raised as a boy named Lawrence.

Through a combination of testosterone therapy and a hard-labor life working on the family tobacco farm, “Larry” grows into a strong, hearty young man.

That is, except for the violent headaches and the fits of unbridled rage.

Honey Lauren

“This film speaks to a universal theme, which is identity,” declares writer and director Honey Lauren. “And alienation. And love. It definitely goes beyond a gender issue, though it is. And I don’t know the answer, frankly.”

Winner of “Most Inspirational Film” at the recent Sedona Film Festival, Mistake is the first feature film for Lauren, an actress and director whose short documentary films, Wives of the Sky and Happy Hands, received critical acclaim. She even plays a role, as Larry’s sympathetic Aunt Peg.

The script, she says, was written 11 years ago. The seed for the story goes way, way back.

“I had something that’s now being called gender dysphoria,” she tells the Catalyst. “From ages 0 to 7 I really thought I was male; I had very, very wonderful parents who let me live my life. And from about 7 to 8, I named myself Lawrence and assumed a boy role. Lived as a boy, cut my hair off and only wore boy clothes. That’s what was my reality.

“As I look back, as a woman, I look back to that time, many years before people were talking about this and doing this and wondering what it was, and I just thought it felt like yesterday, this identity of Lawrence. So I thought I’d write about it. In a lot of ways, that part of me is never going away. I look back and go wow, that was wild.”

In Mistake, adult Larry (played by Dominic Bogart) is unraveling, even as he falls in love with Lily (Jiji Hise), his sweet, mentally challenged neighbor. They live in a small-minded community, where “differences” are not only frowned upon, they are picked at like scabs.

Larry retaliates with his fists.

“I did feel a sense of violence, being a girl trying to pass as a boy,” Lauren reveals. “That was one of the things, maybe, that stopped me from continuing, I don’t know.

“But I have no regrets about who I am today and what, in terms of my identity. What I did then wasn’t anything I could have controlled. It wasn’t a tomboy thing, it was like a soul thing.”

Part of what Mistake work is the performance by Bogart, whose previous independent, festival films include I Am Not a Hipster and Extracted.

During the audition process, “I had a lot of really good guys who came in, who did a rabid dog-mean testosterone-drive, really intensely-fueled … but then they couldn’t come to the other side,” Lauren says. “And then I had the people who could get to the other side but couldn’t bring in the rage.

“I didn’t know that he could for sure until I started watching some of his work … and I went ‘OK, he can get there. I know he can. With all my heart and soul.’ And he really did, so well, that testosterone push, that really uncomfortable in your own skin rage. He was scary when he was scary.”

Although gender, identity and specificity are important hot-button-issues, there haven’t been a lot of film or television dramas dealing with intersex people, specially.

“This movie, I believe, talks about it without preaching,” Laurens explains. “And I’m glad about that, because no one wants to be preached to. Nobody will hear. Or listen.

“So I’m hoping, the way this is presented, that people can hear it and it can bring some kind of compassionate view to this very misunderstood subject matter.”

Mistake screens at 6:45 p.m. Friday, March 5 at the AMC Westshore Theatre, 210 Westshore Plaza. Honey Lauren will be in attendance. Find more information and tickets at this link.

The 19th annual Gasparilla International Film Festival runs March 3-9 at various locations in Tampa; visit the website for all screening and event details.