How a Documentary Helped Me Come Out as Trans: A Look Back at ‘Miss Maria, Skirting the Mountain’
In February of 2018, amid perhaps the most tumultuous period of my life, I was invited by my brother to a screening of Señorita Maria, la falda de la montaña (in English, Miss Maria, Skirting the Mountain) by Rubén Mendoza at The Museum of Modern Art. I was immediately intrigued by the film, which focuses on María Luisa Fuentes, a transgender woman who is known simply as Señorita Maria, living on a farm in the mountainous countryside of rural Colombia. At the time that my brother bought me a ticket to see this film, I had been questioning not only my own gender identity but if I would be able to reconcile my transgender identity with my traditional Colombian upbringing. The ticket I was handed then not only allowed me entry into a theater in the MoMA, but the opportunity to engage with this question that I thought I would forever hopelessly struggle with alone.
This film is sadly not available on any streaming services as of now, though many interviews and articles with Señorita Maria are available online to learn about her story. Despite this, I find that there is value in exploring how this documentary affected me, in order to appreciate the work that documentaries can do not only for their subjects, but for their various audiences.
One can begin to understand the power of this documentary through the trailer alone, which is available on YouTube, where we are introduced to Señorita Maria tending to the land she lives on, speaking about her devout faith in God in a manner and accent that I recognize as familial. Throughout the trailer we see the people of her village recounting the ways in which she is misunderstood and mistreated, culminating in a prayer which Señorita Maria ends by pleading, “Lord, I know you’re out there, and I’m telling you this from my heart… My beautiful Father, I don’t want to be alone anymore.” What is almost cruelly ironic, for me, about her prayer is that the very nature of it shows that she was not entirely alone when she prayed this, because I too shared this prayer before I even had a ticket to hear her story.
In an interview with Vicky Dávila, promoting the film on W Radio Colombia in 2018, Señorita Maria describes her childhood, as she does in the documentary, as being marked by how hidden away she felt from her community, pushed to the margins for being different from the people around her. When asked about the experience of being the subject of Mendoza’s documentary, she remembers being reticent at first. Her fear feels deeply related to the isolation she had grown accustomed to in childhood, a fear that I can intimately relate to. Yet as she continues to remember the experience, she explains that after time spent building trust with the director, she began to grow comfortable and ultimately gives thanks to God for the opportunity she had to be a part of this film and share her story. The trust between director and subject results in a carefully crafted and intimate documentary that invites its viewers to broaden their idea of what the transgender experience is.
Reflecting on my experience watching this film reminds me of how essential it is for filmmakers to do their work with gentle care for the subjects they cover, especially when it comes to portraying the stories of people with marginalized identities. Given the consequences of thoughtless representation, the responsibility that must be assumed by the director and the production crew is immense, and as such, so is the reward when the work is done carefully and effectively. For those of us who watch Señorita Maria’s story, we are invited to experience not only the pain that is felt from being othered. but the joy that comes from living freely. We feel for the child that was wronged that still lives within Señorita Maria, and we feel the unfiltered joy that she has when wearing her signature tights and skirts. For an audience member who is not fully attuned to the experience of being transgender, there is an opportunity for them, if they are willing, to begin to understand the vastness of being transgender in all of its darkness and joy. Yet for me, a transgender youth that was caught between an identity and a culture that I felt were incommensurable, watching this film was life-saving.
After watching this documentary I felt as if I learned a new language with which to make sense of myself. Before, I was stuck within a Latinx experience that I thought was not big enough to hold my trans identity, or a transgender experience that I thought was not big enough to hold my faith. In simply hearing Señorita Maria’s story, however, I saw that there was a future possible for myself wherein I do not need to choose between my heritage, faith, or transness. Knowing of her existence challenged my belief that I was alone in my struggle, and she played a role in making it possible for me to come out to my parents and share my true name with the world only a few months later.
In a time when there is continued violence against transgender women and a loudening anti-trans discourse, it is essential for individual transgender people to look for hope in the stories of those who have come and survived before them. Though more and more transgender stories are coming to the surface in mainstream film and television, many still require more intentional searching in order to find. It is imperative to do this searching and to remember that even within a media landscape that does not fully capture the complexly diverse world we live in, that countless filmmakers are taking the initiative to change this. Unfortunately, their works may not be available on our preferred streaming services, and instead, only be available for one night in a museum theater or a remote local film festival. For this exact reason, I hope you may be inspired to venture into new places to seek out films that you would not have the opportunity to experience otherwise, and be inspired by the hard work being done in our communities to capture the beauty that surrounds us.
Who knows? What you find may even change your life.
