“Don’t you know me, Kansas City? I’m the new Berlin Wall!”

With this trailblazing musical, writer-director-star John Cameron Mitchell and composer-lyricist Stephen Trask brought their signature creation from stage to screen for a movie as unclassifiable as its protagonist. 

Raised a boy in East Berlin, Hedwig (Mitchell) undergoes a traumatic personal transformation in order to emigrate to the U.S., where she reinvents herself as an “internationally ignored” but divinely talented rock diva, characterized by Mitchell as inhabiting a “beautiful gender of one.” 

Unlike most high-concept rock films, this one actually rocks. The film tells Hedwig’s story through her music, an eclectic assortment of original punk anthems and power ballads by Trask, matching them with a freewheeling cinematic mosaic of music-video fantasies, animated interludes, and moments of bracing emotional realism. 

The film was the hit of the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, winning both Best Director and the Audience Award for best film. Despite great reviews, it fared poorly at the box office (file under: Things America Just Wasn’t/Isn’t Ready For), but has earned cult status as one of the great movies of the 21st century, as well as high spots on lists for rock movies and LGBTQ+ films. 

A hard-charging song cycle and a tender character study, Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a tribute to the transcendent power of rock and roll.