Trama

Filmmaker Kimberly Reed returns home for her high school reunion, ready to reintroduce herself to the small town as a transgender woman and hoping for reconciliation with her long estranged adopted brother Marc.

Paul McKerrow grew up in conservative Helena, Montana in the 1970's, the middle of three brothers, adopted Marc McKerrow being the oldest, and Todd McKerrow being the youngest. Paul was co-captain of the high school football team and voted by his class the most likely to succeed. But Paul never felt comfortable in his skin. Paul, now transsexual New Yorker 'Kimberly Reed', goes back to her high school reunion with her girlfriend Claire Jones. Although all of Kimberly's classmates know about her sex change, she is still nervous to reunite with them as she has not seen them since the sex change. However she is more nervous about reuniting with Marc, who she has not seen in ten years and from who she is estranged. Their estrangement is due in part to their sibling rivalry in combination with the sex change and Marc not knowing his biological heritage - Kimberly states that she and Marc are both haunted by the ghost of Paul - and in part to neurological issues Marc has stemming from a head injury suffered in a car accident that occurred when he was twenty-one. Kimberly wants to reinvent their relationship into something positive. Kimberly hopes a point of connection will be supporting Marc in meeting his birth family (which has celebrity connections), but it ends up being another starting point for her to come to terms with her past as Paul.—Huggo

In this documentary, Kimberley Reed returns home after a 20 year absence to attend her high school reunion. She's nervous at the prospect seeing her old high school friends as she was a man then and underwent sex reassignment surgery since. Her family is generally supportive and she's particularly hoping to reconcile with her adoptive brother Marc who has suffered from a personality disorder since a serious car accident some years before and with whom she has had no contact for 10 years. Marc has always wondered about his biological parents and in what proves to be a process of discovery for both of the, Marc learns that his grandparents were Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth. None of it leads to a reconciliation however.—garykmcd

In this award-winning personal documentary, filmmaker Kimberly Reed attempts to reconcile with her long-estranged brother Marc, who has seen her as a rival since childhood. Their paths diverged long ago: Marc was permanently debilitated in a car accident, and Kim left their small-town roots on a journey of self-discovery. PRODIGAL SONS travels from high school reunions in Montana to family reunions in Croatia, revealing a surprise blood relationship with Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth, and other unforeseeable twists of plot and gender that wouldnt be believable if they were fiction. As all the films subjects freely open their lives to the camera, the candid, sometimes bruising footage takes a tender but unflinching look at identity and the past, examining what it means to become someone new.