Valentine Road

In a small seaside town in California on October 12, 2008, 14-year-old Brandon shot his schoolmate Larry twice in the head. Larry was a small boy who liked to dress in women’s clothes and was partial to make-up. This shocking incident, which in fact took place in a school room, drove the small community over the edge causing a media frenzy in a search of an explanation. Was it a hate crime by a budding neo-nazi, was it a personal insult gone wrong or was it an innocent flirtation that turned into a tragedy? Or was it something much more complicated than any of that? Going above and beyond a simple news story, Marta Cunningham refuses to treat her characters like tabloid fodder. Digging into the two main characters’ pasts, she uncovers a network of racist beliefs and criminal prejudices as she tells the story of two kids in search of an identity. “Valentine Road” poses a series of questions that reveal the inadequacy of both the educational and the justice systems in the US, without ever loosing its head and its matter-of-fact attitude proves its biggest virtue.