‘Pray Away’: Film Review | Tribeca 2020 (Hollywood Reporter)

Defectors from the religious right’s gay “conversion” therapy programs speak out about the damage inflicted on themselves and countless LGBTQ youth in Kristine Stolakis’ powerful doc, exec-produced by Jason Blum.

So-called reparative therapy designed to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, using religious indoctrination and bogus psychology, has been dealt with in both dramatic features (Boy Erased, The Miseducation of Cameron Post) and comedies (But I’m a Cheerleader, Saved!). Not to mention a fabulous Will & Grace episode from 2017 called “Grandpa Jack” that featured out queer actors Andrew Rannells and Jane Lynch having a subversive blast playing counselors at “Camp Straighten Arrow.” Wherever they fall on the spectrum between serious social realism and cheeky satire, those depictions have shared a wholesale rejection of the barbaric notion of forcing people to live a lie.