Yance Ford

Being nominated is such a tremendous honor. An Oscar win for me and for the 'Strong Island' team would be the cap to an incredible journey. But it would also mean that my brother will not disappear from history.

Strong Island' has been a labor of love and dedication on the part of so many people, that it's just an incredible recognition to be honored. And to be the first trans director - and, I believe, the first African-American trans director - to be nominated for an Academy Award is incredibly, incredibly special to me.

I love marching bands.

I have been gender-nonconforming my entire life.

Film festivals are usually unpleasant experiences on some level. The lines are ridiculous, the crowds are ridiculous, or the schedules are impossibly arranged: 'You say that there's a film you really want to see? Try the 8 A.M. show! Oh, it's too bad you didn't get to bed until 2 A.M. the night before.'

White people get to do that all of the time. They get to engage in bad behavior, even felonious behavior, but they rarely wind up in jail. But as a black person, losing your temper can cost you your life. Or insisting on your rights can cost you your life.

I hope that audiences understand that there is a precariousness to black lives in this country that we need to address, that there has always been a precariousness to black lives in this country that we need to address. In fact, our country is built on the precariousness of black lives, the disposability of black lives.

Black lives are too easy to take in America because we don't want to question why people are so afraid of black and brown people to begin with. And that's what I want 'Strong Island' to do.

My brother's death picked up my life and put it down somewhere else. I had an image of myself in my mind as a working artist, and when he died, all of that changed.

What little return documentary filmmakers get often comes in the form of recognition by their peers and the critics who influence doc audiences around the country.

I had a list of 10 rules when we started 'Strong Island,' and one of them was, 'Yance will never appear on camera with sync sound.'

Strong Island' is not your typical true-crime film. It's not actually about the uncovering of evidence or following leads that hadn't been seen before or any of that stuff.