Year: 1999
Running time: 114 min.
Country: United States
Director: Kimberly Peirce
Screenwriter: Kimberly Peirce, Andy Bienen
Music: Nathan Larson
Cinematography: Jim Denault
Cast: Hilary Swank, Chloë Sevigny, Peter Sarsgaard, Brendan Sexton III, Alicia Goranson, Alison Folland, Jeanetta Arnette, Rob Campbell, Matt McGrath, Cheyenne Rushing, Jerry Haynes
Producer: Fox Searchlight
Synopsis: From the middle of America emerged an extraordinary double life, a complicated love story and a crime that would shatter the heartland. In Falls City, Nebraska, Brandon Teena (Hilary Swank) was a newcomer with a future who had the small rural community enchanted. Women adored him and almost everyone who met this charismatic stranger was drawn to his charming innocence. But, Falls City’s hottest date and truest friend had one secret: he wasn’t the person people thought he was.
Back home in Lincoln just seventy-five miles away, Brandon Teena was a different person caught up in a personal crisis that had haunted him his entire life.
Like many young people, he made costly mistakes and when he inadvertently trespassed between his new love Lana (Chloe Sevigny) and her reckless friend John (Peter Sarsgaard), the mystery unraveled into violence.
In a single, short life Brandon Teena was at once a dashing lover and a trapped outsider, both an impoverished nobody and a flamboyant dreamer, a daring thief and the tragic victim of an unjust crime.
Boys Don’t Cry explores the contradictions of American youth and identity through the true life and death of Brandon Teena. What emerges from a dust-cloud of mayhem, desire and murder is the story of a young American drifter searching for love, a sense of self and a place to call home.
