The Toronto Black Film Festival gets underway this week, and amongst the many incredible films is the documentary With Wonder by Toronto filmmaker Sharon Lewis.
With Wonder takes an intimate look at the journey of members of the Queer, Christian community of colour and their attempts to answer the question: Can you be both Christian and Queer? The feature-length documentary is described as a love letter to God from the LGBTQI+ community of colour.
According to Lewis, the documentary took shape while she was making another documentary about a Black and openly gay music conductor.
“He started talking about his experiences in the church,” Lewis says. “And I wanted to sort of delve into that area of being in the church and being queer.”
When she started to research what she saw was that there was a really specific experience for gay people of colour in the church.
“They had a whole history of colonialism that they were dealing with,” she says. “And, you know, the church was often kind of forced upon the culture that they were in.”
The backbone of With Wonder, Lewis explains, is the story of Jamaican activist Maurice Tomlinson, and his attempt to put on the first gay pride march in Montego Bay, Jamaica.
“And I was like, here’s somebody who comes from the church is going to — I’m Jamaican, and Trinidad — a place that is very unsafe to be publicly queer, and march. And so I started following him.”
In addition to Tomlinson, With Wonder tells the stories of four other main characters including, amongst others, D’Lo, who is Sri Lankan and Trans as well as Serena, who is Asian and brought up very deep in the church and has found a way to be Christian and queer.
Lewis’s ambition, in asking the question of whether or not one can be Christian and queer, is that viewers can take hope from the film and the stories of its genuine subjects.
“I think oftentimes when our lives are chronicled in terms of coming out, and, you know, the homophobia from the church is often seen as a very despairing,” she explains. “I really wanted to present people in a full, complex way talking about how they fall in love and how they’re grappling with this issue.”
In making the film, Lewis was surprised by the humour in the stories she was telling and the people she met along the way.
“I learned that you can make a documentary about homophobia and the church and coming out and the terror and still, belly laugh,” she says.
The film garnered nominations for Standout Writer, Standout Producer, and Standout Director at Reelworld Film Festival 2021.
Lewis started her career as an actor, co-hosting counterSpin on CBC-TV in 2001 and portraying the mother of Jimmy Brooks (played by a fairly well-known rapper by the name of Drake) on Degrassi: The Next Generation, before switching to filmmaking. She has been recognized with six Canadian Screen Award nominations and won a CSA for Best Direction of a Factual Series.
Up next for the talented Toronto resident is a directing gig with Netflix where she will helm episodes for the popular series Ginny & Georgia.
“It’s about a young biracial girl and her white mom and they move to a very white town and how they’re sort of navigating their life,” she says. “I love it. I absolutely love it.”
For the full schedule of the Toronto Black Film Festival click here.
