Southern Comfort

Thematic Going Home: Southern Family and the Longing to Belong Curated by Macky Alston

Southern Comfort tells the story of Robert Eads, a 52-year-old female-to-male transgendered person and his family of choice in their rural Georgia community. Eads, his girlfriend Loa Cola and an assortment of friends and their loved ones invited the filmmaker into their lives with candor and courage. The viewer shares with them the thrill, agony and banality of becoming, against all odds, themselves. Southern Comfort begins with Eads’s confession that he has been diagnosed with cancer. Full of humor and sadness, the film charts his struggle with illness, but also his striving to tell his story publicly at a national convention of transgendered people in Atlanta. Eads is an everyday hero and filmmaker Kate Davis, in telling his story, has created a film that both articulates the particular truth of an overlooked community and captures the truths essential to all lives. Southern Comfort premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2001 where it won the Grand Jury Prize in the Documentary Competition. After its theatrical release, it aired on HBO in 2002.

Director

Kate Davis

Producers

Kate Davis, Elizabeth Adams

Release Year

2001

Festival Year

2005

Country

United States

Run Time

82 minutes