Reel Pride Film Festival

Tower Theatre :: 1:00pm :: Sunday, September 20

Prodigal Sons

  • $10.00
    • online closed. tickets available at box office
  • Director: Kimberly Reed
  • 2008, USA, 86min

When the most popular boy at school plans to return home to the country for his high school reunion, friends tend to flock to see what he’s been up to since leading the football team as quarterback or dating the hottest girl in school.  When that boy is now a grown woman, will the flock stay or stray?

Kimberly Reed turns the camera on herself as she prepares for a huge reveal and worries if it’s possible to actually go home again after such a dramatic life change.  Waiting for her are friends who never left and seemingly underwent no changes since high school, and a family full of dysfunction on a clinical level.

While Reed is almost prepared for the greetings from friends, she ends up taking this fascinating documentary in an entirely different direction when she encounters her mentally ill adopted brother.  Fearful of his outbursts, depression and intense sibling rivalry, instead she sees a piano playing savant who decides to find his true identity…and this incredible discovery will change both of their lives forever.

Reed's rare access delicately reveals not only the family's most private moments, but also an epic scope as the film travels from Montana to Croatia, from jail cell to football field, from deaths to births. Kim Reed’s compassionate vérité style of filmmaking captures the lives of her family in such an organic way that their exceptional and challenging stories puncture the surface of our expectations. Questions of sexual orientation, identity, severe trauma and family love are effortlessly explored as the subjects freely open up their lives to the camera. Raw, emotional and provocative, ‘Prodigal Sons’ offers a moving, illuminating examination of one family’s struggle to come to terms with its past and present. It's sure to open both your mind and your heart.