Yance Ford has made history. His documentary, Strong Island, was nominated Tuesday for an Academy Award, making him the first out transgender director of an Oscar-nominated film.
Strong Island is a contender in the Documentary (Feature) category, in which it will compete with Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, Faces Places, Icarus, and Last Men in Aleppo. If Strong Island wins at the Academy Awards, Ford, who is also a producer of the film, would make history again, as he would take home a statuette with fellow producer Joslyn Barnes.
The Advocate named Strong Island, a Netflix production, as one of the best documentaries of 2017, calling it "one of the year's most moving and personal documentaries" and "an important, mesmerizing, necessary production."
Ford is not the first transgender Oscar nominee. A transgender musician, Anohni, was nominated for Best Original Song in 2016. The late Angela Morley, a transgender composer, received two nominations, for The Little Prince (1974) and The Slipper and the Rose (1976). And Paige Warner was honored with an award for technical achievement. A Fantastic Woman (2017) nominated in the Foreign Language Film category, the film from director Sebastián Lelio centers on a trans character, Marina, and is played by trans actress Daniela Vega. Read more via Advocate