March 9, 2021
Red State Odyssey: Tony Zosherafatain and Jamie DiNicola on What It Means to be 'Trans in Trumpland'
Kilian Melloy READ TIME: 15 MIN.
Transgender documentary filmmaker Tony Zosherafatain has made a short film, "I Am Isak," about a Norwegian trans man, and he's directed an installment of the series "I Am the T," titled "Cedar" about a Canadian trans man escaping family abuse and drug addiction by embracing his authentic self.
Zosherafatain also directed, co-wrote, and appears in, the four-episode docuseries "Trans in Trumpland," now streaming at Topic. Zosherafatain travels through some of America's reddest states across the four episodes of the series to get a sense of the challenges transgender people have faced over the last few years, under the previous administration – an administration that seemed determined at every step to push transgender Americans to the side and subject them to exclusion and erasure.
But the series focuses less on politics than people. In North Carolina – a state notorious for being ground zero for anti-trans legislation built around the issue of who may use which restroom – he talks with trans teen Ash; in Texas he visits with Rebecca, a trans immigrant from Mexico who has been detained four times by ICE, and been housed each time with male inmates; in Mississippi he hears from Evonne, the founder of a unique non-profit that, the series' press notes say, "provides vital care to Mississippi's violently neglected LGBTQ community"; and in Idaho he interviews Shane, a Two Spirit Native American and military veteran who has spoken out against the trans military ban that Trump imposed via tweet (and which President Joe Biden has rescinded).
Zosherafatain and his producing partner, Jamie DiNicola, run TransWave Films. They spoke with EDGE about their partnership, their production company, and what went into putting this one-of-a-kind road trip together.
Source: Provided
EDGE: The introduction to each episode says that you completed your transition right before the 2016 election, and that election inspired you to go out and talk with transgender Americans. Was that literally how it happened? You woke up the morning after the election and said, "This is unreal; I have to go find out what this means?"
Tony Zosherafatain: What happened is, the month before he won I was recovering from bottom surgery and my mom was helping me. I could not really sleep that night after he won, and neither could my mom. It really felt like a period of shock and grief. Three days after he won, the title just popped into my head. I thought about it, and was like, "Well, that first week he removed any mention of LGBTQ people from the White House website. We're off to a horrible start." I knew in some way I had to document what was going to happen in conservative states to trans people in our country.
EDGE: Jamie, did Tony come to you at that point and say, "I have this title – it wants a producer, it wants a story, let's jump on it?"
Jamie DiNicola: Yeah, he came to me with the name and an idea for the series, and we chatted about it for a while at a café in Brooklyn that we used to meet up at. I was like, "It would be really interesting if we filmed you being the person who goes to meet all of these people. I think you want to be the one doing this."
EDGE: Did you travel along with Tony on this project?
Jamie DiNicola: Oh, yeah, I was there. I did some cinematography in the Idaho episode and in the North Carolina episode, but mostly just did the production end of things.
EDGE: Did you always have the idea that this would be a four-part docuseries on television, as opposed to a feature that was a road trip and involved four people at different destinations?
Tony Zosherafatain: We went into it thinking it would be a feature, so we shot it that way. And then in late 2019, when we began the editing process and got a sales agent involved, the sales agent said, "Have you guys given thought to it perhaps it being four episodes?" I was very curious about that, because I had been used to shorts, and we kind of analyzed it and thought that actually would do well, because a lot of shows are moving toward that [format], on Netflix or Hulu, for example.
The sales agent also said, "The four characters also have very profound stories, so giving them their proper thirty minutes per episode would be great." So we talked about it with our editor, and I realized that was the best idea, and it ended up working. Now, for any future projects it allows me to take a multi-pronged approach: Could something be a feature going in? Could it be a series? What would the story best evolve into?
EDGE: But once that did happen, it must have completely changed the way you were shopping the project. How did you end up taking it to Topic?
Source: Leroy Farrell
Tony Zosherafatain: Our sales agent took over from that point. We were in talks with Netflix and Hulu, and ultimately Netflix told us it was contingent on what happened in 2020, because they were like, "If Trump isn't reelected, it might be tough to market this." Hulu was interested, but they couldn't get it past [parent company] Disney. What happened was, while we were in talks with all of these networks Topic approached our sales agent and said, "Listen, we really like the story. We already have released a lot of trans films, or social justice films." They were highly interested, and their bid for it was really good, and we realized that what we liked about Topic was they were available on Amazon Prime and Apple TV+ and Roku, so we realized that this would reach a bigger audience than other distribution companies that didn't have as much of a reach. And also, we really like the parent company of Topic, which is First Look Media. I really love them. It was an easy sell for Jamie and I to go with them.
EDGE: When it came to deciding who you were going to talk to, how did you decide on these four particular people?
Jamie DiNicola: Tony had connections with Shane already, so he was adamant about having Shane included for the Idaho episode. I thought that was a great idea because of Shane's trans military background, and because he's a two-spirit individual. We had lined up a day of interviewing people, and I was on some of them with him. It ultimately was a long process, and we had to decide who would be the best characters to show [the story] behind the national news headlines, and show what the real life effects are of these [anti-LGTBQ] policies.
EDGE: Did you maybe take out a map and think about the route you were going to have to trace to end up in Idaho, and say, "Well, I can go from here to here to there, and these are the people who will be available to talk to along that route?"
Tony Zosherafatain: It started with Shane in Idaho, and Shane was easy because I thought to myself, "I already know a two-spirit person who's dealt heavily with the anti-trans military stuff," so I reached out to Shane and said, "Hey, I don't know where you are, what you're doing in the world, but I would love to have you be part of this documentary." He said yes, so I was like, okay. I needed three or four other people to be part of this film. So then I thought to myself, "What other states are notoriously anti-trans?" North Carolina popped right into my mind. That's a crazily anti-trans state; HB2, that was huge. And I also realized that there's not as much of a trans adolescence [as there is for cisgender youths], or even supportive parents, so then I interviewed a couple of trans teens and their parents. When I interviewed Ash and Daisy I felt an immediate connection because they seemed ready to tell their story – and plus, they're just awesome on camera, and they're great people. I love how fun and supportive Daisy is.
Source: Provided
I knew that we needed the South represented. Someone [let me know about] Evonne; they said, "There is a woman who runs the only trans non-profit in Jackson, Mississippi." I connected with her; she's a very interesting character. She was ready to be on camera – she had been on camera before, and that was an easy connection as well.
I had known Rebecca, in Texas, for about a year, and when she told me she had been detained by ICE I thought, "This is a story that has got to be told," the anti-immigrant aspect of Trump's presidency, plus her being a trans woman in this border wall state. That's where I realized [the four people I had were] great, and I could be a secondary character.
EDGE: You're balancing the personal stories of each of your four subjects against specific aspects of the political backdrop – trans youth, trans immigrants, trans people of color, and the trans military ban that the former president enacted. But you are also balancing those stories with your own story.
Tony Zosherafatain: Going into production, Jamie said, "Listen, you can really thread this through. You're a trans Iranian-American, you have a crazy family story, why don't you be on camera?" I thought that was a good idea. While we were filming, we thought about what the scenes were where I can be in the backdrop and interview and share my story, and where the scenes were where I have to give each character their proper moment.
In the editing process, this theme of motherhood came up. We realized we needed to connect my story to these characters and what they've gone through, with rejection, acceptance, and their mothers guiding them. That's where we were like, "Okay, that [theme of motherhood] is the glue that can bond all the five people together."
EDGE The film is full of beautiful connections, but one that stands out in memory for me are Tony talking with Ash and showing photos of himself from his own childhood.
Jamie DiNicola and Tony Zosherafatain, simultaneously: Yes!
Source: Provided
Tony Zosherafatain: I was really happy for Ash, because he came out at twelve; I didn't even hear the word "trans" until I was 19 and at college, [and] I didn't come out until years later, because I knew my family wouldn't be accepting. I remember connecting with Ash about that and, just spur of the moment, my DP and Jamie were like, "Why don't you bring your photos out? We know this will be very powerful to show Ash." I just remember breaking down and being like, "Wow, this is incredibly powerful because it speaks to the progress that trans rights have made during a time of repression in our country." And just hearing Ash, how articulate he is, and how he's literally going to have a better life than me because of his mom's support and transitioning during his actual puberty – that really blew my mind. That's why I decided to put his episode first – to show my physical transition story as a way to set up the progression through the series.
EDGE: Tony, did you discover new and surprising perspectives that you might not have thought about as you were hearing these different stories from around the country?
Tony Zosherafatain: Yeah, definitely. Seeing the amount of things that Rebecca – I would say that she's been through the most out of all the characters, unfortunately, because she was detained [by ICE]. In the series [we talk about one experience of her being detained], but it was actually four times. And every time she was detained, she was never housed with women, which is crazy. How could someone see Rebecca and [think she belongs in] the men's detention facility? And to see how optimistic she still is, and how she has her friends and family that have been there for her, including a Catholic mother from Mexico... what it showed me is that there is trans joy in these heartlands, or in these Trumplands, and the ways that every character is carving out their spaces to make sure that they find time to live their life and be happy. That was something that I didn't necessarily expect.
Source: Provided
EDGE What we hear from the parents of the people you talk to is often, "I lost my son," or "I lost my daughter," and "I had to grieve for my child." Is that unwillingness to let to of what we've decided someone should be – rather than let them tell us who they are – an underlying cause for transphobia?
Jamie DiNicola: There are a lot of reasons for it. Not being a parent myself, I could imagine, if you grew up in a culturally specific time and place – as, for example, my mother did, in Italy; she didn't even know what trans was. She probably did feel like she was grieving a daughter, and then eventually she got to see me as an addition of a son. Tony's story demonstrated that beautifully with the story between him and his mom, showing that his mother grieved a loss and then they had reconciliation.
Tony Zosherafatain: What I immediately think about is, there is this movement away from baby showers to celebrating in more of a gender-neutral way. So, I think there is more of a cultural shift that will happen, and I think Ash and Daisy's story does show that a little bit. I'm sure Daisy was concerned and grieved, absolutely, the loss of her daughter, but she quickly adapted in a short period of time and said, "My child needs me. I need to support his physical transition, and I'm happy to have such a good mother-son relationship."
That really did not happen during my generation. I'm 33, and my mother was born in Greece. It was, like, "No." For two years, it was an extreme grieving process [for her]. If people continue to accept trans youth coming out at an earlier age, I think that could be very momentous for trans civil rights.
All four episodes of "Trans in Trumpland" debut on Topic Feb. 25.
Kilian Melloy serves as EDGE Media Network's Associate Arts Editor and Staff Contributor. His professional memberships include the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, The Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association, and the Boston Theater Critics Association's Elliot Norton Awards Committee.
