FIFF Presents: Finding Bernie

When their mother criticizes their painted fingernails, a non-binary film professor confronts a lifelong struggle with gender identity.
About this Event

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 Biography - Shon Keane

Shon Keane is a non-binary New Yorker who writes about people learning to love and laugh while living through catastrophe.

Their short films have screened widely at film festivals, including Telluride, where their teen misfit dramedy THE PROM QUEEN was selected for the “Filmmakers of Tomorrow” section. A graduate of the Columbia Film Division, Shon has written a wide range of feature screenplays, including the queer forbidden love story PANSY, which won top prize at the Independent Feature Project and the Atlanta Film Festival Screenplay Competition.

They recently completed the feature documentary FINDING BERNIE about their search for their gender nonconforming childhood role model Bernie, who cleaned houses in the suburbs of Boston in the 1970s.

Shon is an Associate Professor at the City University of New York (BMCC) and a yoga and mindfulness instructor who in their spare time can be found in Central Park staring at tree

DIRECTOR & WRITER : Shon Keane

PRODUCER: Melanie Williams Oram