Markie in Milwaukee

Fundamentalist Baptist minister Mark Wenzel decides at age 46 to come out as a transgender woman named Markie. It's a decision that ends her 20-year marriage and estranges her three children. It also sees her dismissed from her beloved church and exiled to the margins of her community.

Markie works to build a new life, finding a job as TSA security agent and saving her paychecks for sexual reassignment surgery. But over the course of the following decade, she begins to question her path. She misses the births of her grandchildren and re-evaluates her faith. She also struggles to present herself as feminine at a height of 7 feet tall. On the eve of her surgery, Markie must decide whether to abandon her female identity and return to life as Mark.

Drawing on over a decade of vérité footage and interviews, director Matt Kliegman makes his feature debut with a Diane Arbus-inspired observational style: at once intimate and voyeuristic, tragic and hopeful. Fascinating to watch, MARKIE IN MILWAUKEE is also a timely microcosm of life in contemporary America.