Danielle Lessovitz

Her feature film directing debut was made with Port Authority (2019), which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival's Un Certain Regard section. The film is set in the New York ball subculture and tells the love story of Wye (Leyna Bloom), a black transgender woman, and Paul (Fionn Whitehead), a homeless white man. The films premiere marked an important moment in Cannes history, as Leyna Bloom became the first black trans actress to star as lead in a film at the festival.[1][10][11]

The film was executive produced by Martin Scorsese, who Lessovitz said she was scared to reveal the final product to,[12] explaining that "to feel like you have one of the most if not the most important American auteurs opening up his wisdom and his mentorship to you is surreal".[4]

Taylor B. Hinds for I AM FILM wrote that Lessovitz "displaces the ... white-male role to the outskirts of the queer culture" in the film, also forcing Whitehead's character Paul to rediscover his sexuality and masculinity while engulfed in the ball scene.[12] Lessovitz has said that she knew of ball culture from having seen Paris Is Burning as a film student, but did not know that it was still around in the 2010s until she was invited to one while in a crisis after her father's suicide; watching people vogueing gave her "respite" in this time, and speaking to drag families helped her gain a fresh understanding of family structures.[10] The character of Paul has several parallels with Lessovitz, but she explains that his male privilege is explored in the film, something she has never experienced.[10]

The film also confronts Paul's identity as a white person, something that IndieWire's Jude Dry said Lessovitz "clearly gave a lot of thought"; interviewed by the outlet from Cannes, she said:

We need to have conversations, especially as white allies ... How do we tell these stories that are important to us and relevant to us? How do we do it in a way that's consistent with the deeper humanity that runs through all of us? And we need to have a middle ground where we're not working in a space that's commercial or fetishistic and sort of wanting to exploit or profit off of the beautiful cultural contributions of a class of marginalized people.[4]

Kohn said that Lessovitz's "ability to address the drama's specific hook in measured terms enables this scrappy little movie to strike a quietly progressive note".[9]