Transsexual, butch, lesbian, fag, hermaphrodite, woman, man, he, she, it: Labels and pronouns slide, collide, and become useless in this chilling account of the triple-murder of gender­ ambiguous young Nebraskan Brandon Teena and two acquaintances. Filmmakers Susan Muska and Greta Olafsdottir admirably avoid the temptation to reduce the complexity of Brandon's tragically short life and show instead how the very indeterminacy of the youth's identity became the trigger for transphobic and homophobic hate crimes.

Using traditional as well as experimental documentary techniques, The Brandon Teena Story includes interviews with principal figures in the murder case (including the convicted killers) as well as archival audio-visual footage and stark original images. It's a bleak, painfully candid portrait of life in America's poor white rural heartland. In depicting the geographical and socio-economic context of the murders, Muska and Olafsdottir reframe Brandon's story as more than just another senseless queer-killing — it becomes rather a profoundly disquieting indictment of contemporary cultural malignancies.