A STROUD based filmmaker has won an Emmy award for her documentary about a mum and her young trans daughter.

Lindsey Dryden, a lecturer in film production at the University of Gloucestershire, flew to New York for the 40th News and Documentary Emmy Awards ceremony where she was awarded the Outstanding Short Documentary accolade.

Trans In America: Texas Strong, is the emotional story of mum Kimberly Shappley, a conservative Christian mother who rejects her community’s beliefs when her seven-year-old daughter Kai comes out as transgender.

Meanwhile, Kai has to navigate life at school where she’s been banned from the girls’ bathroom.

The film premiered at South By Southwest (SXSW) 2019, won a Webby Award and a Webby People’s Voice Award in May 2019, and is now available to stream on Condé Nast’s platform ‘them’ (www.them.us).

Dryden (Producer of Sundance award-winning film Unrest, 2017) led a groundbreaking team of LGBTQ+ and transgender filmmakers including Daresha Kyi (Mama Bears) and Shaleece Haas (Real Boy) to make this powerful short documentary in concert with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and her Stroud-based production company, Little By Little Films (which specialises in telling stories about and by underrepresented voices).

Lindsey said: "We attended the Emmy Awards in honour of our LGBTQ+ community, and especially our trans brothers and sisters.

"I’m so moved and inspired by the courage of mums like Kimberly who risk alienation and rejection to embrace their trans children, and by children like Kai, who lives every day with humour and authenticity and love, in a world that tells her she shouldn’t be her true self.

"We want to say with our film and our presence that all trans people are valued, and trans people will not be erased.”​​