Transgender romance short film - Sweet Star Grief
Donation protected
After you contribute, please head over to our Substack and follow our journey to make the feature film Sweet Star Grief!
Sweet Star Grief is a dramatic love story between two childhood best friends reunited by circumstance. Nick is a newly widowed father of a five-year-old daughter, and Jodi is a transgender woman who has returned home to care for her elderly mother who has severe dementia.
This proof-of-concept short film is the first act of the future feature film.
In the last several years, states have passed over 400 anti-transgender laws that make it increasingly difficult, and in some cases, illegal, for transgender people to even exist in public. To fight these cruel and senseless attacks on the human rights of transgender people, it will take all of us standing up and making our voices heard.
Sweet Star Grief will be one of those voices.
Storytelling illuminates hearts and minds, and stories like Sweet Star Grief, that empathize and humanize, will be the engine that forces the social change needed to drive these bigoted politicians and their hateful agendas out of the mainstream, but we need everyone’s help.
The Sweet Star Grief family is a radically diverse group of filmmakers of all ages, flavors, and identities.
We refer to Sweet Star Grief as an "ally film", because, with a core team of two trans artists and two cis artists, our goal is to create an honest and empathetic portrayal of a loving cis-trans relationship that will satisfy an LGBTQ+ (and, specifically, transgender) audience, but also reach out to allies and potential allies in the cis-het community.
Lifelong best friends Nick and Jody are two suburban-middle-class, all-American boys whose relationship deepens as they begin to explore their sexual feelings with each other as teenagers.
Nick is confused by his attraction to Jody, and Jody struggles with his gender dysphoria.
When Jody comes out as a girl, Jodi, to Nick, Nick doesn't understand and commits an act of betrayal that results in Jodi being sent away to live with her father. Jodi and Nick do not meet again for 15 years…
…Today, Jodi has returned home to care for her elderly mother who has severe dementia. Nick and his young daughter, Natalie, are coping with the recent suicide of Nick’s wife and Natalie’s mother, Rachel.
As Jodi struggles to reconcile with her mother who doesn’t remember her, and Nick and Natalie piece their lives back together after their tragedy, Jodi and Nick reconnect and discover together the healing power of family and true love.
Click below to watch the trailer for Sweet Star Grief:
Bowie Nichols (writer/director)
Bowie Nichols is a filmmaker, painter, photographer, and radical humanist.
Born Steve Nichols Smith in Columbia, Missouri, and raised in Oklahoma City, he found home in Atlanta, made a detour to Texas, fell in love in Los Angeles, made a baby in Las Vegas, and returned home to Atlanta to become Bowie.
His short films have screened at film festivals and on television all over the world. His paintings have sold to collectors from Los Angeles to New York City and everywhere in between.
Ava Davis (producer)
Ava Davis is a transgender actress, producer, and writer living in Atlanta, Georgia.
In 2021, Ava was awarded a fellowship by the Sundance Institute and took part in the Institute's inaugural Trans Possibilities Intensive, highlighting the work of transgender filmmakers of color.
In 2023, Ava was named to the board of the prestigious Out On Film film festival in Atlanta, one of the longest running LGBTQ+ film festivals in the country.
Well...the fun part is over...WE MADE THE MOVIE!
Now it's time to get to work, and that's where you come in!
The short film was just the beginning...
Sweet Star Grief is a feature film, so the next step toward making the feature is for Bowie and Ava to take this proof-of-concept short out into the world and get as many eyeballs on it as possible. We will do that by entering festivals, taking it to film markets, applying to labs, setting up screenings...anything we can think of!
But all of this takes money.
Our initial fundraising goal of $5000 will pay for:
- A final sound mix, so the film will sound as great as possible!
- Entry fees for film festivals, which can be as much as $100 each (yikes!). We are planning on entering 35-40 film festivals within the next year.
- Travel expenses to those festivals, so that Bowie & Ava can network with the people who can make the feature film a reality!
- Marketing & distribution costs associated with screening at film festivals (digital film prints, hard drives, posters, postcards, promotional items...)
PLEASE SHARE OUR CAMPAIGN ON YOUR SOCIALS AND WITH YOUR PERSONAL NETWORKS, SO THAT SWEET STAR GRIEF CAN HAVE AS WIDE A REACH AS POSSIBLE!!!
THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING SWEET STAR GRIEF AND HELPING TO TELL TRANS-POSITIVE STORIES!!!
No raffles, sweepstakes, giveaways, or returns on investment are offered in exchange for any donations made to this GoFundMe.
Organizer
Sweet Star Grief
Organizer
Atlanta, GA