A short documentary goes behind the scenes with the Montana state representative as she fights for trans medical care and makes a momentous decision in her own life.

Film by Kimberly Reed
Text by E. Tammy Kim

Early last year, on a slushy predawn morning, I drove to the Montana state capitol building, in Helena, to see the legislature in action. The body is made up of a hundred and fifty “citizen legislators” who meet for no more than ninety days every other year, a schedule designed to accommodate their other, full-time jobs. The session has been described to me as a gathering of friends—there are only a million or so people in the state—or at least it felt that way, for a time. What I witnessed on the floor of the House of Representatives, against the literal backdrop of an enormous settlers-meet-Indians mural, was considerably more tense.