Lila and Mason and the Dying Town
In a conservative rural Georgia town, a young transgender woman and her boyfriend grapple with their love, identities, and dreams of a better future, as they face the choice between the familiar constraints of their small-town life and the uncertain promise of a more accepting world beyond.
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Ava DavisWriter
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Project Type:Screenplay
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Genres:Drama, Romance, Coming of Age, LGBTQ, Small Town, Rural, Southern
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Number of Pages:93
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Language:English
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First-time Screenwriter:No
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Student Project:No
Ava Davis is a Sundance Fellow, filmmaker, actor, and creator of The Duchess of Grant Park, a Black trans royal persona that has become a cultural touchstone throughout the American South. Based in Atlanta, Ava’s work centers queer and trans lives with intimacy, artistry, and a commitment to community. Her films blend grounded emotion with bold visual worlds, exploring identity, belonging, and the quiet tensions of life at the margins.
Through Studio Vosges, the production company she founded in 2019, Ava champions stories by queer, Black, brown, and beige creators while forging new models of sustainable independent filmmaking. Her shorts have screened at festivals across the country and served as catalysts for grassroots organizing, safety networks, and artist development.
Beyond film, Ava works as a Forensic Teaching Assistant supporting simulation-based trainings for healthcare professionals across the Southeast, bringing lived experience, performance skill, and advocacy into spaces where representation matters.
She continues to develop a slate of narrative films, series, and performance works that expand trans and queer storytelling in the South, always returning to themes of resilience, tenderness, and chosen family.
