The 2018 SXSW Audience Award-winning feature film debut by Gabriel Silverman & Fiona Dawson, TransMilitary follows the Emmy-nominated short film Transgender, at War and in Love. Around 15,500 transgender people serve in the U.S. military (notably the largest transgender employer in the U.S.), where they must conceal their gender identity because military policies ban their service. TransMilitary chronicles the lives of four individuals defending their country’s freedom while fighting for their own. They put their careers and their families’ livelihoods on the line by coming out as transgender to top brass officials in the Pentagon in hopes of attaining the equal right to serve. The ban was lifted in 2016, but with President Trump now trying to reinstate it, their futures hang in the balance again. Watch the trailer HERE.
Short Before the Feature: Do I Have Boobs Now? // Milena Salazar, Joella Cabalu :: A trans activist’s journey challenging censorship policies at Facebook and Instagram.
Bio
Silverman is a journalist whose work has been recognized with more than a dozen awards including an Edward R. Murrow Award for his investigative film work, and two News & Documentary Emmy nominations. Silverman is the co-founder of SideXSide Studios and a 2017 IFP Lab fellow.
Fiona Dawson is an Emmy®-nominated, award winning, multi-media director, producer and writer. She directed Transgender, at War and in Love commissioned by The New York Times and created the media project TransMilitary, which intimately shares the lives of American transgender troops risking discharge as they work to end the discriminatory ban upon their service. Her feature length documentary TransMilitary, directed and produced in collaboration with SideXSide Studios, premiered at South by Southwest (SXSW) 2018 and won the Best Feature Documentary Audience Award.