Coming to theatres today, Friday, April 12:
THE MOST DANGEROUS YEAR
Director:
Vlada Knowlton
Premiere:
Seattle 2018
Select Festivals:
St Louis, Rhode Island, Newburyport Doc, Atlanta Doc, Kansas, Portland
About:
The parents of trans kids fight against discriminatory legislation in Washington State.
The titular time covered in Knowlton’s project is 2016, which the Human Rights Campaign noted due to the disturbingly regressive spate of bills put forward in state legislatures to target transgender individuals. Colloquially known as “bathroom bills,” this legislation attempted to force individuals to use public bathrooms that corresponded to their biological/birth gender, using unfounded fears of infiltration of women’s bathrooms by perverts or rapists to trigger popular support. The film focuses on such a bill proposed in Washington, and the impact it has on families with transgender children, like the director’s. Knowlton, who unfortunately chose to (over)narrate here, profiles her own daughter and the latter’s struggle to be accepted as a girl as one of the film’s featured stories. While doing an adequate enough job of highlighting the issues unfairly facing trans people, this well-meaning but very basic production struggles to stand out.
what (not) to doc 