Her/Mine
Description
A heartfelt and reflective documentary that delicately balances nostalgia with a deeply personal journey of self-discovery, Her/Mine traces the life of director Alexandra Shiva’s late mother, Susan, an actress and travel agent, and the daughter of Hollywood mogul Jules C. Stein. As the filmmaker sifts through her mom’s belongings, including a trove of 16mm footage, she pieces together the traces of a childhood shaped by privilege, loss, and longing. The film becomes a poetic meditation on memory, grief, motherhood, and the weight of familial legacy as Shiva contemplates her own mortality, drawing parallels between past and present. Jane Fonda, Barry Diller, and Griffin Dunne appear along with Shiva’s family in this documentary that offers a unique and deeply intimate perspective in its poignant and unconventional reflection on love, identity, and the stories we inherit. —Amir George
Biographies
A New York City native and Vassar graduate, Alexandra Shiva made her directing debut in 2001 with the documentary Bombay Eunuch (2001). She went on to make Stagedoor (2006); How to Dance in Ohio (2015), winner of a Peabody Award; This Is Home (2018), winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s World Cinema – Documentary Audience Award; and Each and Every Day (2021). She also directed a documentary miniseries, One South: Portrait of a Psych Unit (2024).
Hilton Als began contributing to The New Yorker in 1989, joining the staff in 1994, and becoming a theater critic there in 2002. He won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2017, one of many awards for his work. Previously, Als was a staff writer for the Village Voice and an editor-at-large at Vibe. He has also written several books. He is a teaching professor at the University of California, Berkeley and an associate professor of writing at Columbia University’s School of the Arts.
