Becoming Johanna

Jonathan Skurnick's documentary starts out as a film about a transgender girl and her mother, but ends up somewhere else. Sixteen-year-old Johanna, who lives in the Los Angeles area, introduces herself by saying, "Biologically, I'm a boy, but I'm a girl—I'm going to be a girl." Initially, Johanna told her mother she was gay because of her attraction to boys, but she knew there was more to it than that. As a child, she played with dolls and role-played as a girl. By her teens, she had come out as transgender. Her relationship with her Guatemalan-born mother here devolves to the point that Johanna ends up in a mental hospital for three days, an experience that she finds traumatic. Afterward, there's a physical altercation with her mother and Johanna moves in with a foster family. She also transfers from a public high school, where she is not allowed to use the girls' restroom, to a school for at-risk youth. While her foster family offers support, Johanna clashes with her new principal, Deb Smith, and an English teacher who remembers that she would swear and miss deadlines. But Smith refuses to give up on her, and Johanna's attitude and grades improve. During the two years Skurnick follows her, Johanna attends a support group, models for a calendar, prepares to change her name, considers sexual-reassignment surgery, and graduates from high school. By the end, she has a boyfriend, and says "I'm in a good place." It remains to be seen whether she and her mother will ever reconcile, but this sympathetic documentary shows how much of a difference mentors can make in the lives of transgender youth. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (K. Fennessy)