Maxine, a precocious sixteen-year-old in Wheeling, West Virginia, feels safe and loved in the town she calls home. But as anti-trans policies threaten her healthcare, her mother pushes to leave, forcing the family to confront what home, safety, and belonging really mean.
SYNOPSIS
Between worn-down mountain ridges and the brown Ohio River sits Wheeling, West Virginia, a former steel town outsiders know for its opioid crisis and crumbling infrastructure. Locals know it for its hockey team, debate champs, and spaghetti dinners. It’s also home to Maxine.
We meet Maxine on her sixteenth birthday, which is also her first birthday as Maxine. After years of depression, she describes transitioning as “giving my soul the home it’s always wanted.”
But just as Maxine begins her new life, West Virginia passes laws restricting gender affirming care for minors, threatening her access to treatment.
Maxine’s mother, Kara, throws herself into advocacy and pushes to leave the state in search of safety, while her father, Clint, wants to stay and fight. Though Maxine appreciates her parents’ support, she resists being reduced to a political cause. Through her eyes, Wheeling remains a place of comfort and community; the people threatening her future are distant lawmakers, not her neighbors.
As restrictions increase and Maxine’s medication supply dwindles, the family struggles to decide whether to stay or leave. Over the course of the year, they visit places they might move while Kara confronts painful memories tied to the family’s longtime home.
Meanwhile, Maxine moves through the rhythms of adolescence, navigating friendships, school, and becoming a confident young woman who knows her own mind.
As Maxine approaches seventeen, the family must decide whether they can move forward together in the town that has shaped all of them.
Director Statement
West Virginia is a place of seeming contradictions where a deep culture of neighborliness exists alongside political systems that can feel hostile to difference. It is also the only state located entirely within Appalachia, a region long reduced by outsiders into stories of poverty, ignorance, and crisis. I wanted to make a film that explored the genuine complexity of place and resisted the myth of a single Appalachian story.
As a woman who grew up in the region, I’ve long been interested in the ways that place contributes to ideas about gender. Originally, this project began as a film about masculinity and generational identity. But during the research process, I became increasingly aware of how anti-trans rhetoric had spread within my hometown. At the same time, I encountered a deeply visible culture of queer solidarity, reinforcing my belief that places, like people, can hold many truths at once.
Maxine’s mother, Kara, and I went to high school together, and through conversations about the experience of parenting a trans child in Wheeling, we began discussing the possibility of making a film together. What struck me immediately about Maxine was her wisdom and her ability to be both thoughtful and direct. She wanted her voice to be heard and was willing to be vulnerable.
Together, we decided to focus on creating a film that honors the complexity of Maxine’s experience. At its core, this is a universal story about parents and children, and the difficult process of evolving alongside one another.
ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)
Amanda Kowalski
Amanda Kowalski is a documentary photographer, cinematographer, and director whose work explores the intersection of rural and gender identity, as well as climate change.
As a cinematographer, her work has contributed to films that have won multiple Boston/New England Emmys and screened at festivals worldwide, including Raindance Film Festival, Gasparilla International Film Festival, and Telluride Mountainfilm. In 2026, she was selected for the American Film Institute Cinematography Intensive.
Amanda’s short film Crest of the Hill (co-directed with Samantha Broun) won the Reel 13 competition, was featured on NPR.org, and received the Jury Prize in the 2015 Living With Alzheimer’s Film Competition. In 2024, she directed her first feature-length documentary, The Alliance, which premiered at the Rhode Island International Film Festival, was included in the Woods Hole Film Festival “Dinner and a Movie” series, and received a jury prize at the RAW Science Film Festival.
Before transitioning into photography and film, Amanda was a nationally touring musician and co-founder of the Grammy-nominated bluegrass band Della Mae.
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