By Sarah Opdahl
Award-winning director, writer, producer, and fourteen-year resident of New Fairfield, Luchina Fisher happily creates films focused on “stories where an opportunity exists for us to have conversations about what it means to be American, what it means to be human in all of our various shades and identities and diversities.” Her documentaries are impacting millions of viewers, with the latest short, The Dads, reaching a new pinnacle of success on Netflix. “Ultimately, the film is about love,” Fisher said of The Dads, “It’s about what unconditional love looks like which, isn’t a straightforward proposition. It’s not easy. It’s not something we can take for granted, it’s something you have to work at.”
The Dads engrossingly captures a weekend fishing trip with Matthew Shepherd’s father, Dennis, and five fathers of transgender children who come from completely different backgrounds. Endearing and approachable, the film provides a touching glimpse into open conversations among the fathers, who are remarkably candid and comfortable in front of the camera, despite never having been professionally filmed before. They discuss gender, their own manhood, and reckon with their reactions to their children’s timelines, questioning whether they did and said the right things along the way. Fisher stressed, “it can feel very isolating,” to be a parent in this process, “many of them express that, trying to go it alone.” She also noted, “The Dads is providing a message of not just love but the way that we can connect and find community through difference because these men come from different geographies, different life experiences, different races, and ethnicities. They have found a way to connect and find community and I hope that is a message that everybody can take away.” Fisher is hearing from many viewers who wished it were longer, that they were privy to more of the conversations, and who are wondering how the dads are now.
For The Dads, “we started talking about it in 2020, before the pandemic hit,” Fisher explained. At a special conference for LGBTQIA youth for The Human Rights Campaign, “three of the dads had been talking about going on a trip to the woods. I thought that was an interesting juxtaposition of two worlds and said ‘I would love to film that.’” A discussion began with The Human Rights Campaign, for which Fisher works with fellow allies and parents of trans kids, and the idea began to grow in the lead up to the fishing trip in March 2022. With a small budget, Fisher was able to spend the weekend with the dads and a tight crew of trusted colleagues, who she knew would “fade into the background, so that these dads could have the conversations they needed to have.” The months of editing that followed were purposeful, as Fisher “had the South by Southwest Film Festival deadline in mind.”
Once a film is released, “there’s a whole other race,” which involves a heavy cycle of promotion. Following each film’s shooting there is a large team of editors who work closely with Fisher.
The world-renowned South by Southwest film festival, which accepted The Dads, provided a remarkably well-received premier and Fisher realized, “That was like the beginning of the thought that there might be something special here.” The festival opened doors like little else could and resulted in Fisher criss-crossing the country to attend one festival after another, many of which resulted in prizes and other acclaim. Numerous outlets reached out to Fisher for distribution, but when Netflix knocked, “it was a no brainer,” she said. It is now available in 190 countries and translated into 39 languages through the platform. With an initial hope to reach a broader audience than The Human Rights Campaign traditionally does, the relationship with Netflix will ideally continue to flourish for future films. DOC NYC was another exciting event for The Dads and is one of the largest documentary film festivals in the country. It can be a barometer for the projects that end up on the Academy Award shortlist, which will be released later in December.
For years, Fisher worked at ABC while simultaneously creating scripted films. One of her first documentaries, Danger Word, was created ten years ago. She recently recorded a conversation about that film with her best friend and they agreed that it is “hard to believe that I get to do this full time now.” Fisher said, “I have always been a storyteller, I found myself just absorbed by film and entranced by the stories that I saw on the screen. So, for me, it’s been this journey of trying to get my voice out into the world, to create things, of course, to create stories, to tell stories.”
With a culture war ongoing in the United States, and around the world, there are real fears about acceptance, safety, and rights for LGBTQIA youth, however, Fisher has great hope for this generation, saying “they are just more adept, more open, and they’re kind of leading the way in many ways.” Also a documentary filmmaking professor at Yale University, she says she sees “it in the classroom all of the time. These students are sure of themselves and confident in their identities, and I feel like that is a really hopeful sign.”
Fisher is at work on several projects, including a documentary on black, queer representation in music, following winning $150,000 in funding from the PitchBLACK Film Forum. She is excited about this film, in part because, “Music brings people together,” she sees the work as an exciting bridge between communities. “I guess that’s my approach in many ways because that’s how I live my life, bringing people together,” she said.
With four films on the promotion circuit this year, life for Fisher in 2023 was a whirlwind, including frequent travel, though Fisher anticipates that next year will involve more shooting time than promotion. She reflected that she feels grounded in New Fairfield, where she typically works from home. She enjoys spending time in town with her husband, David, and three children—two of whom are in college and one who is a student at New Fairfield Middle School.
A streaming of Fisher’s short film, Team Dream, along with other short films, is planned for Thursday, December 14, 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. Tickets are available at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/short-cuts-film-festival-2023-part-2-tickets-738043476907. Team Dream follows two friends as they prepare for the 2022 National Senior Games. While they train, viewers learn about their upbringing amid segregation and stigma before breaking boundaries in Chicago with Team Dream, a training program for women of color in swimming, biking, and triathlon.