By Variety | Created at 2025-03-10 20:07:01 | Updated at 2025-03-10 23:09:17
3 hours ago
At the start of Matylda Kawka’s feature debut “My Sunnyside,” an officiant welcomes guests to “the most traditional progressive wedding” they will ever go to. In the footage that succeeds it, we learn why: despite entrepreneur Jo and science professor Allie both being trans and surrounded by fellow liberal thinkers, they have found great comfort within traditional structures such as marriage and parenthood. Kawka’s Thessaloniki Documentary Festival entry trails their love story throughout eight years, as the two blend their lives and families in a world still plagued with persistent discrimination and systemic barriers against trans people.
Speaking with Variety ahead of the film’s premiere in Greece, Kawka recalls first meeting Jo as a freelance video editor who worked for one of his many companies. Years later, she saw Jo and Allie’s relationship blossom on social media and felt transfixed by the couple’s charisma and Allie’s “piercing eyes.”
“They were starting a very lovely love story and were very open about their relationship on social media,” she continues. “Then I noticed that Jo also started to transition and felt this was a very inspiring story about people meeting in the right time and then going on a journey together.”
On proposing the documentary to Jo and having early conversations on how to chronicle his life alongside Allie, Kawka says it was all about establishing “trust.” “The two of them were very open with us from the beginning, we just had a chemistry. The crew was very small, only me and my husband, who was the cinematographer and also did sound. We always limited the size of the crew for their comfort. We wanted to be a fly on the wall. The beautiful thing is that we became friends. We still have a very fulfilling personal relationship now.”
“My Sunnyside” also provided Kawka, who previously studied philosophy and wrote her thesis on the gender evolution of notions of freedom and equality within the context of gender difference, to closely observe how those who transition later in life have an acute understanding of how men and women are treated differently within society.
“Our protagonists have direct access to the difference of those experiences and have felt it viscerally in their own lives, the way they have been treated differently depending on the gender they appeared as,” points out the filmmaker. “It was interesting to have this proof, almost like an autopsy, of how differently people are treated based on their gender.”
Kawka, who is Polish but has lived in New York City for over a decade, says she could not have imagined the timeliness of her film when she first began working on it back in 2016. President Trump has made trans people a major focus of his 2024 campaign, going on to sign off on several executive orders radically affecting the lives of trans people in the U.S. during his first months in office, including banning federal funding or support for youth gender-affirming care for those under 19 and ensuring the State Department will only issue passports that say male or female and that match the applicant’s sex at birth.
Asked about the film’s political ripples, Kawka reiterates it is “important” to have films like “My Sunnyside” shown to broad audiences. “Trans people are like us. They have similar problems and goals and just want to be happy, create a family, and have a community around them. Allie and Jo have created a kind of traditional family where the most important values are to be connected, to give love, comfort, and safety. These should be the goals for any family. They are both leaders in their community, have successful careers… One of the goals of the film was to show how easy it is to identify with them.”
In a statement shared with Variety, Jo highlights that, more than “being just a film about a trans couple,” “My Sunnyside” is a film about “love, relationships, parenting and navigating the challenges that life puts in front of us all.”
“My hope is that through this film people will see themselves, trans or not,” he added. “That we all are just trying to raise our kids, face health issues, and deal with the schisms in families because of the current climate. That said, in this moment when trans rights are under siege, I hope that putting a face on who we are will help remind people that protecting our rights is protecting everyone’s rights.”
Allie echoed her husband, saying, “Matylda and Marcin were able to honestly capture the tensions inherent in many trans lives, especially the tension between shame and acceptance. All humans inhabit these emotional spaces, but they are often prominent features in the landscapes of trans individuals. We hope that this film brings a deeper understanding of transgender individuals. Although the transgender experience is unique in some ways, these differences often hide the overwhelming commonalities. We hope that by being able to portray the everyday lives of a trans couple, the differences will become less important than these universal connections.”
