DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT: “Finding Bernie” uses my personal story as a window into the larger issues that face many trans and non-binary people. I explore the process that I have gone through, as a middle-aged person, to free myself of the deep-seated conditioning that caused me to live at odds with myself for so many years. This film is anchored in my admiration for my community of trans people and captures my experience of what Alok Vaid-Menon describes in “Beyond the Gender Binary” when they write: “Becoming ourselves is a collective journey.” The interpersonal bonds shown on screen serve as vehicles for discovery and evolution; indeed these relationships are where healing happens in real time. 

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My personal journey to integration unfolds on screen through my therapy sessions and through my childhood recollections shown in reenactments where little Shon escapes to the basement and draws on the walls. “Finding Bernie” is made for trans folks who want to celebrate our community and also serves as an invitation to viewers like my mother to understand gender diversity. The search for my role model Bernie, who lived outside the gender binary before the term transgender was even coined, is a pointed rebuttal to the fear-mongering rhetoric of American politicians seeking to legislate us out of existence. 

 

FINDING BERNIE addresses the fears that fuel transphobia and asks viewers to engage in what trans activist and actress Laverne Cox has called a revolutionary act: loving trans people.