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Kimberly says that she always felt uncomfortable in her body growing up, but that it was a slow realisation about what was really going on. "That was due to a lot of repression," she says.
"I think that's very common. It was a very lonely, isolating experience. I never confided in anyone. I was always a bit of a loner, and stuck in my own head. I was very quiet, but I was still quite popular in high school. I was class president and valedictorian, and I played football. I was pretty good too.
"I had girlfriends throughout my teens. I guess I was trying to find things that would 'fix' me and that meant doing the things I was expected to do growing up."
'I had a very slow transition," she explains. "I know a lot of people who do it overnight -- literally. For me, I was slowly transitioning as I was working through school and starting off in my career. It took a good few years; the standard practice is to go through a lot of therapy and counselling as you're going through the process.
"My family knew about it to varying degrees at different times. My younger brother Todd is gay and also lived in the Bay area in San Francisco, so he was the first I told, along with my mom. My older brother Marc was the only one who wasn't in on everything.
"After I transitioned I was a bit uncomfortable about it all. When you change your sex, there's a tremendous pressure to bury your past and to 'disappear'. That's what I did. I gave up being a filmmaker, and worked in publishing instead for many years.
"When I started making this film, I found my brother Marc was the only one who wouldn't let me get away with forgetting my male past. He forced me to reclaim it."
"I think anyone who transitions often wonders, 'Well, I started off in the wrong body, am I going to end up in the right one?' That scepticism is why it's important to take the whole process step by step, rather than doing it radically overnight."
Living her new life as a woman, Kimberly admits that she found conducting relationships difficult at first. "I guess I just dreaded the conversation," she says. "But I really found that the more at peace I was with it, the easier it was for other people to accept. I've now been with my partner, Claire Jones, for the past nine years."
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