History was made during the 2018 Academy Award nominations, as documentary filmmaker Yance Ford became the first ever transgender director to earn an Oscar nomination.
Ford is nominated for Best Documentary Feature for his first feature-length film "Strong Island," a documentary film based on the real-life events surrounding his brother's death, a high school teacher who was killed by a white mechanic on April 7, 1992.
Entertainment Weekly got the first chance to talk with Ford after receiving his Oscar nomination, where he said: "I think that everybody out there should know that there is a generation of trans directors who are coming for their Oscars. So this might be the first, but it certainly won't be the last."
"The very exciting thing for me when I think about history is that this film is a correction to the historical record of my brother's life," he added. "And if this nomination helps to magnify that and if by making history I helped to magnify that, then... it's all good as far as I'm concerned."
Ford filmed his response when he got the nomination in his home in New York together with his partner, Amanda. The short clip, which was posted in "The Strong Island's" official Twitter account, has already been watched and shared more than a thousand times.
According to Ford, he's extremely humbled that he got nominated for the award, and that the enormity of the whole thing is still sinking in. He's also glad that among all the trans directors out there, he's the first one to actually make into that threshold.
After the Oscar nominations were announced on Tuesday, GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement that that day was "a big day for LGBTQ-inclusive films at the Academy Awards." She also said that Yance Ford and films like "The Shape of Water," "A Fantastic Woman," "Lady Bird," and "Call Me by Your Name" being nominated mean that critics and audiences these days are not just mostly accepting—but hungry for "stories that embrace diversity."
"Strong Island" is currently available to stream on Netflix.
