Writer and director Michael Dole and The Daughters bring Onyx to life with artist Stevan — a film that refuses every box the world tries to put a person in. The looks that decide before they know. The prejudice that arrives in a room before you do, and lingers after you leave. Onyx answers it all with a single act of self-possession.

Black onyx is a stone of protection. It absorbs what is sent against you. It guards the energy others would take. Its affirmation — I draw strength from my past experiences — became the spine of the film.

We meet Stevan marked by white handprints, the residue of being misread again and again. We follow him into a torchlit forest, pursued the way it feels to move through a world that has already made up its mind about you. We leave him covering himself in black paint — not as a mask, but as armour drawn from the inside out. A purification. A returning. The stone made flesh.

A film against prejudice, written from the inside of it. A celebration of difference, refusing to apologise for it.