At the Wednesday night premiere of XY Chelsea at the Tribeca Film Festival, director Tim Hawkins mourned the fact that the subject of the documentary, Chelsea Manning, couldnt be in attendance.

In 2013, Manning, a former U.S. Army intelligence analyst in Baghdad, received a 35-year sentence for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents. It was reportedly the longest ever sentence for a leak of U.S. government information. Four years later, after Manning had already survived two suicide attempts and extended periods of solitary confinement in prison, President Obama commuted her sentence. Now, two years after that life-changing commutation, Manning is currently incarcerated once againfor refusing to testify in a grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks.

When I first started making this film, Chelsea was still in prison in Kansas, Hawkins explained. And in one of the letters that she sent me, she made a kind of dark joke about how she thought shes going to miss the premiere. That was three years ago. A lot has happened since then, and just weeks ago we were making preparations for her to be here with us today.

In a conversation after the filmone that Manning would have participated in if she was not currently incarceratedlegal counsel Nancy Hollander told the crowd that shes very concerned for Chelsea. Shes not in solitary anymore, but Im very concerned about her being there and Im concerned about what this means for the rest of her life, that this is just another example. The government is going to continue to go after her. Theres really no reason for them to need Chelseas testimony at this point, as far as Im concerned.

Asked to clarify the stand that Manning is currently taking, Hollander continued, Its an objection to the process. The grand jury is a secret organization that we shouldnt have in our system to begin with. If she testifies, she runs into tremendous risk to herself, and she also doesnt believe that we should have grand juries. For her, its another step in the principled actions that she has taken. Theyre very courageous actions. This is something I would expect from her.

Hollanders statements line up with the portrait that XY Chelsea paints. Its an intimate study of a woman with no apparent sense of self-preservationsomeone who throws herself again and again into principled fights, at the cost of her emotional and mental well-being, and ultimately her freedom.

The documentary also helps to shed light on the personal toll of Mannings courageous choices. While Manning has proven herself willing to risk almost anything to take a stand, she has been severely traumatized by the repercussions of her actions. During one of the bleakest interviews that she gives throughout the film, Manning describes her experience in solitary confinement prior to her military hearing. At one point, in Kuwait, she was kept in a cage for 60 days, for up to 23-and-a-half hours per day. Manning struggles to articulate what she experienced there, before concluding, I was alive but also dead, and Ive been dead since. For Manning, even after her release, freedom feels like purgatory. She explains her inability to escape this sense of impending doomparanoia that has since proved prophetic.

Now that Chelsea Manning is back in hell, it feels more imperative than ever to understand how she ended up there in the first place.

I was alive but also dead, and Ive been dead since.

Chelsea Manning

The documentary begins with news of the commutation of Mannings sentence. It follows her from her release to a safe house, and then out into the world. At various points we return to the past, reconstructing Mannings whistleblowing, her trial, and her time in prison through messages, phone calls, and news footage, all framed through Mannings own recollections. In the present-day narrative, we see Manning physically adjusting to freedom. In her words, learning how to be again. Of course, Manning has to do more than just be; shes a public figure now, and we watch her navigate fameinterviews, photoshoots, her first viral tweet. Some people want to hear from Manning, learn more about why she did what she did. Others, like threatening trolls who call her a traitor, have already made up their minds.

XY Chelsea is in part an effort to refute the narratives that formed around Manning when she first entered the publics consciousness, like takes that attributed her decision to give classified documents to WikiLeaks to gender dysphoria-related distress. To hear Chelsea Manning tell it, she was disturbed by what was being done in the name of the American people in Iraq and Afghanistan, from civilian deaths to torture tactics. In her words, life was cheap in Iraq. While on leave, Manning recalled feeling as if everyday Americans had forgotten about the war, and were unaware of its atrocities. She had access to classified documents that would provide a window into these wartime realities; moreover, she felt guilt over her complicity. Manning attempted to contact multiple mainstream news outlets, but wasnt getting anywhere. Knowing that she needed to leak the documents before returning to Iraq, she turned to WikiLeaks.

During the films talkback, Hawkins emphasized, Really, if you honestly look at the interaction between [Assange and Manning] it wasnt the kind of thing thats been built up by the media. And I think, you know, we often make these sort of associations, that theyre kind of part of a cabal, that Snowden and Assange and Chelsea are all friends and talking on the phone and thats just not the caseI think what this film was really about is firstly the personal story, and re-centering the perspective.

An important part of that reclamation is hearing Manning talk about her transition, on her own terms. Manning says that she always intended to go public as a whistleblower, but was afraid that being trans would take over everything else. She served her sentence in an all-male prison, where she was able to successfully sue to begin hormone therapy. As a trans woman in prison, Manning remembers being ogled and judged by fellow prisoners and guards. She says that the guards would often walk in on her while changing; and then, she adds, there were the strip searches. In a recorded excerpt of a prison phone call, an emotional Manning can be heard pleading, I want to be treated like a human being, I want to be treated like a woman. Painful descriptions of an attempted suicide attempt underline the direness of the situation that Manning had found herself inbelieving, at that point, that she would spend the rest of her life behind bars.

Once she was released Manning wasted little time putting her platform to use, throwing herself into activist work before she had begun to adjust to life outside. She even launched a Senate campaign, in part galvanized by the rise of the alt-right. At one point in the documentary, explaining why she felt the need to speak out against fascism, Manning asks, What are they going to do, throw me in prison? Or kill me? Theyre going to do that anyway.

This anti-fascist fight quickly led to a huge controversy: Manning, in what she describes as an effort to learn more about her enemy, attended an alt-right event. While Manning was transparent about her efforts and her motives, many accused her of hanging out with neo-Nazis and bombarded her with criticism on social media. Documentary footage taken in the midst of the backlash shows Manning extremely upset, mainly with herself. A subsequent tweet sent from the roof of a building sparked fears that Manning might attempt suicide. While she was ultimately fine, she took a step back from her campaign in an effort to focus on her health.

At one point in the film, Manning insists, Im not a hero; she is, however, someone who firmly believes that no one should sit around waiting for a saviorthat its not going to stop until we stop them. This core belief illuminates Mannings actions. She is someone who stands up for what she believes in, often past her human limits.

Speaking on Mannings current incarceration, Janus Rose, a friend and member of Chelseas jail support committee, said, She really is concerned about using this as an opportunity to engage in another protest against a system that she finds unjust. Later on, Rose added, She didnt want to just kind of fall into obscurity when she was released. She wanted to seize this moment and use it to produce some kind of good, because shes always kind of been the kind of person that cant really just like sit by when she knows she can do something. I always tell people thats the most consistent thing about her personality, is that in every phase of her life that I know about, she seems to, when given an opportunity to do something, she has this bias toward action. And you know, sometimes its good, sometimes it backfires. But I think its great and its good that we have people like that.

Another Manning lawyer, Vince Ward, agreed, saying that Chelseas not a typical person. He continued, Theres something about being around people who are sacrificial to an extent, and I didnt really think that existed until I was around Chelseathat there were people who were literally willing to do something that was so contrary to their self-interest because they felt that strongly about something."

I know that she says shes not special, but I think theres something special about that rebellious spirit, Hawkins chimed in. But at the same time, if you act alone against a huge institution like the U.S. government, its going to crush you. Its going to swallow you up, and so whilst we kind of venerate and can sometimes martyrize figures like Chelsea, whistleblowers who stand up, actually what we really need to do is be getting behind them collectively, because its only going to be through collective action that we actually do make any sort of real changes... You need the rebels and people like Chelsea, but you also need all of us to really rally around. And I think now is a great moment for us to help her.

At the beginning of the film, Manning confesses that she loves a good coming-of-age story. Its a sentiment made all the more poignant as we see how Manning used the army to escape a largely unhappy adolescence, before moving from the military to prison, and essentially losing a decade in the process. As Rose put it, She didnt really get to have a young adulthood and all of a sudden she comes out and shes, you know, 29 approaching 30 years old and the world has changed.

Now, Mannings life has once again been put on hold, as her friends and supporters eagerly wait for the day that she can start learning how to be all over again.

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Chelsea Mannings Lawyer Says Shes Very Concerned for Her at Tribeca ...

Im not a hero, says Chelsea Manning toward the end of Tim Travers Hawkinss XY Chelsea, a riveting but often frustrating documentary that focuses mainly on Mannings 2017 release from jail, where she spent seven years for sharing classified military documents. During her time in prison, Manning came out as a trans woman, and on her release, she takes delight in putting on ultra-red lipstick and growing her hair long, which was not allowed in the all-male facility where she was detained.

Manning is currently back in prison for refusing to testify to a grand jury against Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks leader who released Mannings documents and videos online after The New York Times and the Washington Post expressed no interest in this information in 2010. It is not made entirely clear in XY Chelsea just what Manning feels about Assange, but she is likely martyring herself again purely on principle over a man to whom she has no loyalty. Assange might be unsavory, but from Mannings perspective, the U.S. government is worse.

In a public interview with a New Yorker reporter that is shown here, Manning is asked tough, but fair questions about what she did and why she chose WikiLeaks, and she responds very defensively and inconclusively. There is so much of this story that needs further explanation, information, and context, that judgment regarding much of what we are being presented has to be suspended for now.

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There is always a sense here of Mannings emotional and physical fragility, and this is the aspect of XY Chelsea that is particularly difficult to parse. We are shown various people who have been drawn into trying to help and protect Manning both legally and emotionally, and once she is freed from prison they coalesce into a team that includes publicists. Manning poses for photos that present her visually as a kind of Edie Sedgwick of whistleblowing, and the effect is uneasy because it is clear that Manning does not quite know how to position herself for the public. The tragic aspect of this is that Manning is often so bright and appealing on camera that she might have made an impact in so many other ways if the pressures of her early life hadnt led her into joining the military.

Manning was born in Oklahoma in 1987, and both of her parents were alcoholics. From what we hear, Manning led a very insecure life as a child and adolescent, and she was pressured to conform, which is what led her to sign up for the military in 2007. At five-foot-two, the rebellious Manning did not fit into this new environment in any sense, yet the army was so in need of recruits that she was eventually entrusted with classified information.

See Photo: Chelsea Manning Poses for Vogue: 'Guess This Is What Freedom Looks Like'

Manning says here that, the Iraq War had left the consciousness of America by 2010, and she was horrified by how life was cheap in Iraq. The videos that Manning released via WikiLeaks exposed civilian deaths that were covered up as the deaths of enemy combatants, and Manning stresses several times in XY Chelsea that she knew exactly what was in all the documents and that no harm could have come to military sources by releasing this information this is a point that is surely up for some debate. There are no easy answers here and many vexing questions.

Hawkins does not interview Mannings father, who seems to be at the root of so many of Mannings problems, but he does talk to her mother Susan, who suffered a stroke a few years ago. Susan looks very much like Chelsea, and in the fragments of speech we hear from her she expresses love for her daughter and remembers how Chelsea used to command three computer stations at home.

Also Read: Chelsea Manning Blasts Trump's Transgender Military Ban: 'Sounds Like Cowardice'

Manning is articulate and clearly intelligent, and she was self-aware enough to call herself nave in a computer message we see on screen in the lead-up to her releasing the classified documents. That navet gets her into trouble when she attempts to engage with people on Twitter and eventually runs for office. Manning makes the mistake of attending an alt-right function in order to infiltrate the enemy, but this military tactic earns her scorn from her Twitter followers, and this leads to a message from her on Twitter that reads Im sorry underneath a photo of a womans feet on the ledge of a building. (Manning attempted suicide twice while in prison.)

The story of Chelsea Manning is still very much in process, and we are not going to understand some of its ramifications for years to come. This is a very difficult personal narrative to try to digest and make sense of, but at least XY Chelsea makes for a start on this, even if it cannot approach anything definitive on her singular story.

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XY Chelsea Film Review: Doc Tackles Chelsea Mannings Very In ...