Transamerica:
Bree (Felicity Huffman, Desperate Housewives) is a highly educated transsexual woman, living in a poor section of Los Angeles and working two jobs to save money for her final sexual reassignment surgery. When she receives a phone call from Toby (Kevin Zegers, Smallville), a jailed teenage runaway looking for his father, she’s shocked to discover that a fumbling heterosexual encounter during her life as a man resulted in a son. Bree's instinct is to turn her back on the past but her therapist insists she must confront it, withholding legal permission for Bree’s final operation until she has met the boy.
Mysterious Skin:
When he was eight, Brian Lackey woke up in the crawlspace beneath his Kansas home with his nose bleeding, having no idea how he got there. After that, his life is different – he’s afraid of the dark, wets the bed and is plagued by terrible nightmares. Now eighteen, Brian believes he was abducted by a UFO. Neil McCormick is the ultimate beautiful outsider, the boy everyone loves from afar but is afraid of when they get too close. Also eighteen, Neil longs for the relationship he shared with his Little League coach when he was eight years old. Neil’s search for what he thinks is love leads him to New York City. Brian’s search for what happened to him leads him to Neil. Together they come to realize that the events that shaped them most were not what they seemed to be. Based on the acclaimed novel by Scott Heim, MYSTERIOUS SKIN puts us inside the hearts and minds of two very different boys living very different lives who maybe aren’t as different as they first appear.
Shortbus:
Numerous New York City-dwellers come to the exclusive club Shortbus to work out problems in their sexual relationships. Rob (Raphael Barker) and Sophia (Sook-Yin Lee) are a happily married couple, except for the fact that she has never experienced sexual climax. This irony follows her to work, because she is a couples counselor who frequently has to deal with the sexual issues other couples have. Two of her patients are Jamie (PJ DeBoy) and James (Paul Dawson), a gay couple who have been monogamous for five years and counting. James wants to bring other men in to the relationship, and his own history with depression may hint at an ulterior motive. Ceth (Jay Brannon) may be the perfect addition to their family, but Caleb (Peter Stickles), a voyeur from across the street, may have his own ideas about that. At the urging of the two Jamies, Sophia visits Severin (Lindsay Beamish), a dominatrix with secrets of her own to reveal.
