Never reverting to tired platitudes, queer filmmaker Markie Hancock uses intimate footage to reconstruct the story of her slow break with her evangelical upbringing. Tapping into her personal experience, she also illuminates the “civil war” that divides so many of us in these United States.

At the dawning of the Reagan years, she explains that it was “hard to tell where the religion ended and family began.” Indeed, it was hard to tell where indoctrination ended and a personal belief system began. To sort it all out, Hancock heads to a divided Berlin (“The irony was not lost,” she explains), where personal exploration provokes a critical choice: Leave the religion and lose the family, or stay in the religion and lose yourself. Time passes, fundamentalist ideologies intensify and Hancock elucidates how the issues that are segregating our country are the same ones that painfully divide her family. The film is so evenhanded that it is likely to resonate equally with both heartland evangelicals and San Francisco queers. Ultimately, Born Again questions which is scarier: the fight for, or the attainment of, personal freedom?

The poignant short film In God’s House – Asian American Lesbian & Gay Families in the Church profiles several Asian Americans as they struggle to reconcile their faith and an often hostile church. — ROBERT O’SHAUGHNESSY