Writer/director Anna Kerrigan’s Cowboys is a sensitive drama which tells the story of father Troy’s (Steve Zahn) attempt to empower and understand his transgender son Joe, despite mother Sally’s (Jillian Bell) desire to ignore or even supress her son’s true identity. Pieced together through flashbacks and memory, Kerrigan’s film is truly brilliant in its sympathetic portrayal of son, father and mother, bolstered by the cast’s delicate and thoughtful performances and Kerrigan’s obvious intent to avoid making a villain of Sally, but portray an individual who has simply not yet understood the true nature of her son.

‘Sometimes I think aliens put me in this girl body as a joke’

Entranced by the charismatic Troy and his bowling alley friends, whom embody the kind of cliched cowboy archetype of masculinity of which other films would perhaps be unduly critical or suspect, Joe comes to understand that his identity does not match his outer appearance and the clothes, interests and hobbies forced upon him by Sally. ‘Sometimes I think aliens put me in this girl body as a joke’, Joe proclaims in one heart breaking scene, one of many in a film which surely announces transgender actor Sasha Knight as a major talent to watch. Steve Zahn’s supportive father, quick to recognise and accommodate young Joe’s identity, with the simple use of pronouns ‘him/he’ employed in opposition to Sally’s aggressively stubborn use of ‘she’, is desperate to do right by his son, even if his own bi-polar disorder often finds him making rash decisions in pursuit of this goal.

Indeed, Cowboys is predicated upon one of Troy’s rash decisions. In a bid to emancipate Joe from the repressive control of his mother, from whom as this point he is estranged, Troy takes Joe into the wilderness to live the life of a cowboy, complete with camping, beans and adventures on horseback. Joe and Troy’s journey, spurred on by the vague notion that they will cross the border into Canada, is an idyllic paradise, one in which Joe has the freedom to behave in the way he wants to and bond with the only person who readily accepts him for him. On their trail is Ann Dowd’s (The Handmaid’s Tale, Compliance) Detective Faith Erickson, out to return a child to his panic-stricken mother, but who quickly grows more and more attuned and ultimately sympathetic to the particular nuances of the case and the strained family unit at hand.

Across the film’s lean running time cinematographer John Wakayama Carey’s camera captures the beauty of the western landscape whilst never forgetting the human emotions and performances at the core of this story. Kerrigan’s direction is equally masterful and come the film’s closing moments, one is left with a memorable, insightful and truly human drama which reflects an almost perfect synthesis of script, actors and crew.