FINDING BERNIE
feature documentary directed by Shon Keane
currently in post-production
When their mother criticizes their painted fingernails, a non-binary film professor confronts a lifelong struggle with gender identity. They set out on a journey—searching for a gender non-conforming childhood role model, traveling with a multigenerational trans community, and befriending a trans historian. Past and present intertwine, revealing how personal identity is shaped by collective memory—and how, for many trans people, the personal is inherently political.
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 admiration for trans people and invites viewers to see us through the loving eyes of a child who looked up to Bernie as an inspirational figure.
My personal journey to integration unfolds on screen through my therapy sessions and through childhood recollections shown in reenactments where little Shon escapes to the basement and draws on the walls. 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.
Blending personal narrative with a road trip into the past, “Finding Bernie” is at its core both an intimate coming-of-age story and a reflection on how trans histories are remembered, lost, and reclaimed.
At a moment when trans lives are so often politicized, “Finding Bernie” offers a quieter, deeply personal perspective rooted in memory, admiration, and love.