Red Without Blue

"We were just in love with each other since the day we were born." So begins the haunting and intimate portrait of identical twins, Mark and Alex Farley. They shared an idyllic childhood until their parents' rocky divorce, hard drugs, and coming out in their homophobic rural town darkened their teenage years. Separated for two years after a joint suicide attempt, Alex announced that he had decided to live as Clair.

The focus of this refreshingly contemporary, stylish doc is not gender transition, however, but Mark and Clair's intertwined struggle to understand their identity. As they work through their past to their uncertain future, the twins' evolution forces family secrets and emotions out into the open, threatening the already fragile fabric of the family.

An audience award winner at numerous festivals, Red Without Blue is a surprisingly compassionate portrait of one family's redemption and the unbreakable bonds of twinship.

Kyle Stephan