“Donna’s story can teach us how to take our authentic selves to other people in a gentle but affirming way”: Jay Bedwani on Donna

Donna is the sensitive and eye-opening documentary from director Jay Bedwani about 70-year-old trans activist, artist and performer Donna Personna. After meeting Donna at a party in San Francisco, Bedwani was inspired to make an observational film about her, and spent the next four years following both her everyday life (performing in drag in downtown bars) and her journey to further finding acceptance of her identity within the community and with her estranged conservative Baptist Mexican family, who still knew her by her birth name of Gustavo.

The feature is an intensely personal one, but also allows the viewer a way into the trans experience through humanising a story that is often obscured by reductive labels and polarised media coverage. In watching Donna gradually gain confidence through contributing to a play about the little-publicised 1960s Compton Cafeteria Riots and revisiting her own experiences and memories alongside a new generation of trans activists, a universal message emerges of the need for all of us to discover and embrace our true selves and find our places in society. The importance of the freedom afforded to communities in locations such as the city of San Francisco also becomes clear.

We sat down with the filmmaker to discuss how he first met Donna, the process of filming her over four years, how San Francisco itself is crucial to her story, the significance of telling human stories about the LGBTQ+ community and how he hopes his film gives viewers inspiration for how to lead their own lives authentically. 

Sarah Bradbury

Donna is released on 15^th July 2022.

Read our review of Donna here.

Watch the trailer for Donna here: