By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Jay Bedwani
Country: france, united_kingdom
Year: 2022
Running time: 75
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14540324/reference/
Thom says: “This is certainly going to be one of the most fun reviews to write ever (or so I thought). When my brother Chuk and I moved from Fell Street to our wonderful new apartment on Laguna Street, the day we arrived in our largely older LGBTQ residence (newly built & fresh) we were approached by Donna, also newly moved in, outside our unit welcoming us to the building. Over the 3 years we have lived here I have had innumerous encounters with her, either in the building, or out on our busy street. As I thought from the start, Donna is a proud, older transgender, of quite some repute it turns out. She is prominent in local politics, even connecting with San Francisco mayor London Breed at civic events. She is also a cabaret artist, with little professional talent but a huge amount of joie de vivre that delights many denizens of the drag clubs. Over the past few years she related that she had a role in a play about the overtaking of a local diner, & she had been approached by UK director Bedwani about making a documentary of her life, which this film turned out to be. For no real reason in particular, other than their ever-growing media presence, I have been especially fascinated with the transgender community in the past few years and to make an acquaintance of a relatively prominent one has been a very educational experience for me. The film features snippets of Donna’s life and a particularly memorable reunion with her family which she hadn’t seen in years, some time before her transformation. Donna has few outstanding qualities but the very decency of her accepting and loving herself as she wants to be is both haunting and lovely. I feel I am a better person for knowing her. 4 cats”