“Jack & Yaya,” a documentary film about a transgender woman and man, follows best friends from early childhood through their parallel journeys of radical self-discovery. Meeting as neighbors across a backyard fence in South Jersey, then instantly inseparable, Jack and Yaya are in their thirties now and remain devoted friends, knowing more than anyone about each other’s true natures and processes of transitioning. Inspired to capture this unique alliance, partners Jennifer Bagley and Mary Hewey directed and produced the documentary that follows Jack and Yaya through reunions with their families and communities. “City Lights” producer Summer Evans spoke with Hewey, along with Yaya, to talk about their story and the experience of documenting them.
“They tell stories of souls, and having a soulmate, that you’ll find throughout your life… and that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a romantic soulmate. I feel like our souls just kind of knew that we were supposed to be with each other,” said Yaya. “We’ve had this connection before we knew the adventure we were about to go on, it just was there.” The two friends say they always knew they were different from how their families saw them, that Yaya was a girl and Jack was a boy, from the beginning.
“It’s just so incredible that we were able to access that footage and I have to really give a shout out to Jack’s mom,” said Hewey, of the original home videos that bring the story of young Jack and Yaya to life. “It was so fun to be able to look back on those videos and just see how much Jack and Yaya are exactly the same people they were at six and seven, as they are now.”
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