THE BRANDON TEENA STORY

A young man arrives in Falls City, a small town in rural Nebraska, at the beginning of December 1993. Twenty-year-old Brandon Teena is a stranger to this town, but his friendly manner and youthful charm soon win him friends among his peers. The town's young girls are particularly attracted to him and he has no difficulty finding a girlfriend. However, only three weeks later, on Christmas Eve, Brandon is brutally beaten up and raped by two of his friends. This astonishing act of fury was prompted by the friends' discovery that Brandon is in fact a girl. A week later, on New Year's Eve, a few miles outside Falls City, the same two young men murdered Brandon, along with a young mother and another man with whom he had sought refuge miles away. Susan Muska and Grιta Olafsd1⁄2ttir's finely crafted documentary takes a closer look at this tragic case. What their film reveals is an astounding potential for hatred - founded on homophobia - among the inhabitants of rural America. It also tells the tragic story of someone who happened to be born with the "wrong" sex and their search for identity. We learn how this person's sexual ambiguity was regarded as a betrayal and was met with disturbing hostility by the inhabitants of this remote little town. The film makes it clear that the townspeople are still attempting to understand what happened during Brandon's fateful final days.