“Why Alabama?” friends ask. “You must be crazy.” For lesbian couples living in a deeply conservative state, where same-sex families have no legal protections against discrimination, these are not unfamiliar words. When it comes to Southern hospitality, Alabama seems to have little to offer the women featured in Lary Embry and Carolyn Sherer’s stirring and empowering documentary.

In 1953, newly elected President Eisenhower signed an executive order barring homosexuals and other so-called sexual perverts from working in the federal government, ushering in decades of paranoia, witch-hunts, and mass firings—an era described as the worst time in American history to be gay. Before it ended, this “lavender scare” cost thousands of federal employees their jobs and many their lives, but it also ignited the sparks of the modern gay rights movement.

Finding one’s path in life is infinitely complex, yet many trans people are externally defined solely by that small part of their journey. Through textured vignettes, collaborators Silas Howard (Transparent, By Hook or By Crook) and Jen Richards (Her Story, Frameline40) illuminate themes of family, resilience, self-determination, and finding your calling, through the perspective of trans people of color.

For decades, Armistead Maupin has deftly conjured the enchantment of San Francisco and its denizens in Tales of the City. In this charming documentary, Maupin is shown to be just as endearing, funny, vulnerable, and bold as his popular protagonists.