“I got into all of this because my uncle went through conversion therapy when he came out as trans as a child,” Kristine Stolakis explains to Business Doc Europe of what led her to make her feature documentary Pray Away (acquired by Netflix just before its premiere at the Tribeca Festival earlier this summer).
The film doesn’t deal directly with her uncle’s story. Instead, it looks as the so-called “pray gay away movement” through which LGBTQ people were encouraged by the church to use conversion therapy to change their sexual orientation.
Stolakis’s uncle had gone through conversion therapy in the 1960s and early 1970s – and had been treated as if he was suffering from a mental disorder.
“What followed was a lifetime of mental health issues which included depression, anxiety, suicidal ideations, addiction issues, compulsive disorder – a whole host of things,”
The uncle died just before Stolakis went to film school. She decided then that she wanted her first feature to be about the conversion therapy movement.
Her uncle’s story isn’t featured directly in the film but motivated Stolakis to make it. She quickly came to understand that the people running organisations like Exodus International (the ex-gay Christian umbrella outfit) had “internalised homophobia and had internalised transphobia.”
“I started doing research. What I found is what you really see in the film, which is that the vast majority of conversion therapy organisations are actually run by LGBTQ folks themselves who claim that they’ve changed,” Stolakis explains.
Such groups had led people like her uncle to believe that they could and should change – and had intensified their guilt and self-loathing in the process.
“He never lived life as a trans individual or any out queer person,” the filmmaker says of how her uncle was forced to hide his real personality. From childhood onwards, he underwent treatment from professional therapists who all tried to tell him that he was “broken.” However, most conversion therapy today takes place within religious organisations and Christian non-profits. This may be pseudo-science but the authorities rarely intervene to stop it.
The main protagonists in the documentary are former leaders of these religious organisations. Many are from the now disbanded Exodus International. They’re “survivors.” They have been through the therapy but, as Stolakis puts it, “they’ve made it out.”
One motivation for making the film was to show those still caught up in the conversion therapy programmes that “there is a world on the other side…because when you’re in it, it doesn’t really feel that way.”
The “hopeful note” in the documentary is that “you can make it out.” There are ways of escape from the sinister and “closed-circuit” world of religious conversion therapy.
However, Stolakis is realistic enough to accept that many do not escape. Rates of attempted suicide among the hundreds of thousands going through the therapy is alarmingly high. When outfits like Exodus are forced to close, others will spring up in their place.
Pray Away has some influential backers. Jason Blum’s Blumhouse Productions, the outfit behind such horror films as Paranormal Activity and The Purge, is one of the production partners. Ryan Murphy, the creator of Nip/Tuck, Glee and American Horror Story, is an executive producer. Murphy, like Netflix, joined the project after the film was selected for Tribeca in 2020 (thanks to the pandemic, it ended up screening there in 2021). Multitude Films, founded by Jessica Devaney, was a partner on Pray Away from the outset, before anyone else.
For her film to have a chance of changing attitudes and “help move the needle forward in a genuine way,” it needed to be seen. That is why she is so appreciative of the big-name partners supporting the film.
“We always had dreams of a wide commercial release,” the director says.
Ricky Chelette, the pastor from the ‘Living Hope’ ministry who oversaw the conversion programme undergone by Julie Rodgers (one of the doc’s main protagonists), refused to be interviewed. So did Anne Paulk, the ex-wife of John Paulk, another of Stolakis’ key witnesses. John had been a leader and poster boy for Exodus, a regular face on chat shows and in the media, before he came out again as a gay man.
However, Freedom March founder and ex-trans Jeffrey McCall did agree to appear on camera. Stolakis profoundly disagrees with his “transphobic and homophobic” views but ensured they were represented fairly. “He truly believes what he is doing is right. It took something for him to say yes – and he did.”
Alongside the talking head interviews in Pray Away, there are moments of observational, verité-style filmmaking. For example, at the start of the film, several passers-by are shown stopping to pray with Jeffrey McCall, who preaches an impromptu sermon to them. It’s a surprising and strangely moving scene. “The warmth with which he was received in his community was so striking,” the director reflects. “It gave me an understanding of why he would be motivated to say what are ultimately extremely homophobic and transphobic things. If this is someone who has always had trouble belonging to this community, you can see why that would be intoxicating.”
Pray Away was edited by Carla Gutierrez whose credits also include such high profile docs as RBG and Chavela. “I felt like I had met a true soulmate,” Stolakis says of her collaborator. “So many editors I spoke to were afraid of the bigness I envisioned for this film – [a] multi-subject film which took place in the past and present and which mixed interview and archival [material].”
Pray Away was “a beast” to structure. It had many different perspectives and storytelling styles but Stolakis credits Gutierrez with helping the film “to dance and sing.”
