In 2018, Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont released his full-length feature debut Girl, a fictionalized account of a trans ballerina inspired by the real life journey of Belgian dancer, author, and model Nora Monsecour. Amid Girl’s release, Dhont spoke openly about his longtime muse, telling The Guardian that the film itself was “a document for Nora.”

Today, Lukas and Nora still share a deeply vulnerable relationship — something you might expect of two people moved to make affirming art together. But even more than that, there exists between them a fierce, mutual admiration for each other’s essences, not only as artists, but as living and evolving humans hungry to see, to create, to connect. In this conversation, Lukas and Nora welcome us into their ether as they grapple with a range of big ideas; exploring the meaning of beauty, the freedoms afforded by self-love, and the generosity of companionship.

Lukas

We’ve already known each other quite a while now, right, Nora?

Nora

Yeah, for a very long time now. We started with a coffee in Ghent in this cute little cake place. And I think this was the first time we met. No?

Lukas

Yeah, it was. We met for the first time in a cake place. 

Nora

We had coffee and hot chocolate.

Lukas

(laughs) I want to talk about beauty. I know beauty standards have been something that we both have a very complicated relationship with. I remember the very first time I ever filmed you. 

Nora

I also remember it. Yes. A very special moment. I think I must have been 17 or 18 years old. This was like the first year that we met and I had to do a graduation program. And as part of my work, I asked you to film me, to film my face. 

Lukas

Can you describe it for me? What happened to you in that moment?

Nora

The idea of my graduation work was about female empowerment. And I think in that moment I felt anything but empowered. So when I asked you to film me, I don’t know, something happened, something clicked where I met myself somehow, and the duality within what I was creating. I felt very shy and uncomfortable to be filmed or to be seen so closely and also to be seen by you. 

Lukas

I think it was also a very powerful moment for me because we are full of contradictions, of course, and a lot of the times we are looked upon as people who want to celebrate and be powerful and be examples and show how beautiful we can be. But sometimes the relationship we actually have with ourselves is much more complex.

Nora

I remember even watching it back and I saw so much emotion in my face and I thought, wow, yeah, we have to do something with this. I have to somehow have this vulnerability shaped in a more empowered version, which came later on in my life.

Lukas

Were you feeling beautiful in that moment?

Nora

No, it was very hard for me as a teenager to feel beautiful in a personality sense as well as an aesthetic sense, I think. It was a search. Beauty was never really a word that I affirmed with myself, but I knew I was strong and I knew I had power within me, which later I saw as my beauty. But at the time, it was just about surviving. It was more about building instead of appreciating who I am, if that makes sense.

Lukas

That makes a lot of sense. What was beautiful for you at the time? 

Nora

It was my future. My future was my utopian world. That was for me what was going to be beautiful, that was going to be the space where I would flourish. That outreach for the future was the reason why I kept working on myself and why I kept accepting and motivating myself to keep going, because I had such an idea about who I was going to be and who I was going to be turning into, which to me was a very beautiful woman and a very powerful dancer. And there was the beauty for me.

Lukas

Was there an ideal female that you strived for or that you felt you needed to accomplish or needed to live up to?

Nora

I had a very stereotypical idea of what a woman was back then that I felt like I had to live up to. I wanted to have long hair. And aesthetically, I had all these checkpoints that I wanted, and this was very important to me at the time. But at the same time, I very much looked up to very powerful women. I mean, Beyonce is one of them, my mother is another one. I always wanted to be like a mixture between a vulnerable and a powerful woman. I think I’ve also accomplished that now, this combination.

Lukas

Do you feel that your relationship to aesthetic beauty has changed or the aesthetic ideal of beauty has changed over time? 

Nora

When I was transitioning, the emphasis was more on the physical. So therefore, that had a huge importance in my youth. But at this point, I’m quite happy and satisfied with how I look. So then the emphasis was more on, like, okay, who can I be as a person, as a woman? What does that mean for me? How can I establish that further? 

Lukas

How did you feel you found beauty for yourself, in yourself? 

Nora

I used to obsess about the fact that I’m not a biological woman, and I used to really observe all the traits that would come with that. I used to obsess over all these things, and it would make me feel less beautiful. But now I’m at a stage where I’m really accepting myself as a trans woman and therefore also accepting all these physical traits that are part of that, making me very special and valuable. This ultimately leads me to more self acceptance, to admit to myself that, yes, I am a trans woman. And that’s beautiful. And that can be explored, and that can be emphasized, and that can be different and unique. But it takes time. It’s not an easy road.

Lukas

I remember the very first moment I realized, wow, things have shifted for Nora in her head. The journey between the emotion I saw on your face when the camera was pointed at you so many years ago, and then, so many years later, you’re the face of a Pantene commercial.

Nora

Yeah. Wow. If I reflect on this, it’s a huge transition. I think I really liberated myself. For so many years, it was so much about fitting in. And once I accepted that not fitting in is equally as important and equally as valid, then there came such a gratitude of, wow, I am put on this earth with a certain story that I can now share with all these people. And at the same time, it’s an aspect for me that makes me feel beautiful and feel powerful. So when I did this commercial, yeah, that was exactly what I also felt was a sense of celebration of my beauty and a celebration of my voice. And that was definitely not there when we first filmed years ago.

Lukas

I also remember I saw you perform, you’re a professional dancer. You are incredibly talented. There’s a hunger inside you to show, to prove, to create. 

Nora

It’s nice what you said about hunger. It’s still how I feel. I still feel hungry to live and hungry to dance. And this need for getting everything out of life is something that started back when I was young, and it’s something that I still have today, but it’s also something that I recognized in you, for example, when we met years ago. It’s something that I feel we have in common. And I think that’s also why we connected so deeply, because I felt all these parallels, even though we have completely different stories. It’s a sense of using whatever we’ve been through. It’s this search for identity,  this essence of believing in our own stories through art.

Lukas

Absolutely. I remember there was this line that Jules, the character in Euphoria, said about beauty, where she realizes that she has created this idea of what is desirable based on the fantasies of patriarchy – to unlock yourself from that is a big task. Do you relate to that?

Nora

I’ve made such huge steps when it comes to loving myself. But when it comes to men in specific, it’s still a big fragility. And there is still a lot that I haven’t unraveled about what my relationship towards men is, and how much it impacts how I view myself. So when I saw that episode, it was like I was hearing myself talk. There have been times when I dated men and was amplifying or performing my femininity almost because I felt the need to be accepted by them. I put a lot of my self worth in love.

Lukas

Of course, it’s about vulnerability and it’s about being able to show yourself completely, and be free. 

Nora

Love is such an interesting topic for me because it’s hard for me to distinguish when I meet someone how much the trans topic is a topic. When it comes to receiving love, I’m always questioning why someone calls me beautiful. I’m like, is he really saying that because he wants to confirm that I’m looking like a woman? These thoughts prohibit a sense of freedom and relaxation that love and romance need, which can also obstruct a certain flow. So every time I’m falling in love or I’m meeting somebody else, I’m mindful. If I come to a point where I start questioning if this person is not loving me enough because I’m trans? … I always hate this sentence, but you have to love yourself before you can love somebody else. When you meet someone it works like a mirror – it will touch you on the sore wounds that you’re dealing with at the moment. 

Lukas

I would say I have only had one relationship where I really felt love. In a sense where love is really unconditional, that it’s not about the flaws you have or you think you have. It’s not about the things you do that you think aren’t right, or the things you do in which you excel. It’s just about you. It’s about you fully. It’s about every bit of you, every part of you, everything about you. When I feel that with someone, I can call it love. Do you feel the same relationship to sexuality?

Nora

If it’s a more casual setting, I can let myself go more easily. I must say that I’m not blocking myself that much when it comes to sex. I try not to be too much in my head because, yeah, most of the time for me, sex is something fun and something playful and energetic. And I try to keep that as that. And I don’t want to overcomplicate things by being too much in my head, even though sometimes it happens.

Lukas

I get that. I love that we are in this moment in time where we can see trans joy and the joy of celebrating the body, the joy of celebrating identity. That feels so empowering for a young person seeing that nowadays… who hopefully won’t have to go on a journey that takes so long to find home within the body. But of course, at the same time we live in times where even in Belgium, the country where we are, we see right wing politicians and the difficulty they have with trans identity.

Nora

It is incredibly scary. And it also sometimes influences the celebration of my own identity. I keep reminding myself how privileged I am with the life I am living and with the support I’m getting. When I see these right wing parties putting so much pressure on us as trans people, I feel like I need to react and to fight more than celebrate. But at the same time, I also think it’s necessary because we are beautiful and we are people that should be celebrated and are having a space in life and in this world. But sometimes I’d rather cry about the situation than laugh about it or celebrate it because some things are very harsh. 

Lukas

I think it’s in those moments that your identity and your bodies become political as well.

Nora

And I’ve never seen myself in such a way, or I’ve been privileged enough not to see myself in this way.

Lukas

The way that you’ve written a book about your journey towards yourself…I would consider the actions, your actions, to be very political.

Nora

For me, they’re hugely human. For me, they’re acts of humanity rather than… for me, it’s more a message of human emotion and of human experience.

Lukas

I love that you verbalize it like that because I strongly believe when you look at Europe and you look at all these places where queer rights are under attack, whether it’s Hungary or Poland or Italy, I often think this is not about queer rights, this is about human rights. This is about allowing people to live their most authentic, real version of themselves, whatever their sexuality, whatever their gender. And the fact that we’re still having that debate around freedom is incredibly heartbreaking.

Nora

It makes me think about what I can do hopefully… to share a message to others that dreams are valid and worth pursuing in this world.

Lukas

It’s about changing that standard that was set before us, the feeling we had to live up to all this time. By showing that beauty consists of multitudes, that it’s not one shape, one type of form, one type of look, it’s so empowering to young people.

Nora

Yes, exactly. They can shape it for themselves more and more, which is hugely exciting. I’m really excited to see the younger generations and what that will bring for them in terms of self expression and discovery.

Lukas

That’s why I love that you called it a human action rather than a political one. You know the journey you’ve been on, and you try to give something that can feel like an accompaniment on that journey, that can feel like hand holding to them, something above them, something that protects them, something that can offer healing in a moment of doubt.

Nora

That’s really nice how you describe it, the handholding, because people call me a role model sometimes, or somebody that they can look up to. But to me, it’s exactly this – it’s about how we can form this circle and hold hands rather than putting me on a pedestal, it’s more about the circular connection. This is why I do the things I do –  to be able to stand next to each other.