Synopsis
Director:
Kristine Stolakis
104 min, US, 2021
In this eye-opening and compassionate exposé into the “pray the gay away” movement, filmmaker Kristine Stolakis reveals the elaborate machinations, rationalizations, and hypocrisies of conversion therapy and its devastating reach. By gaining remarkable access to founders of the Evangelical ministry Exodus and other “ex-gay” spokespeople, Stolakis goes behind the scenes of the movement’s enduring legacy across America’s culture wars over the last four decades and how it continues to destroy lives. Once stars of the Religious Right, former leaders like John Paulk, Julie Rodgers, Yvette Cantu Schneider, and survivor Julie Rodgers all recount their most intimate and painful journeys from “going straight” and self-loathing to their eventual rejection of the manipulations of psychology and faith they once preached. “Powerful, gripping” (The Hollywood Reporter) and "a profoundly moving, heartbreaking examination… it might be the must-watch movie of the year” (The Playlist).