Doc Stars of the Month: Cheyenne Adriano and Mari Timans, 'Unsettled'

Taking Best Documentary Feature Film at last year's Outfest, Tom Shepard's Unsettled, an IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund grantee, adheres to every fraught definition of its title. Debuting on WORLD Channel on June 28 (and available for streaming on WorldChannel.org through July 12), the film follows four newly arrived LGBTQ refugees and asylum seekers — Subhi, a gay man from Syria; Junior, a gender-nonconforming gay man from the DRC; and Cheyenne and Mari, a lesbian couple from Angola. Over several years, Shepard's camera captures this diverse foursome as they all figure out how to navigate life on these increasingly hostile shores — and in the process learn the true price of American freedom.

So for this Pride "Doc Star of the Month," Documentary is honored to spotlight two brave LGBTQ asylum seekers, Cheyenne Adriano and Mari Timans, who traded horrific threats on their lives for a more mundane form of US insecurity.

To read my interview with the persevering duo visit Documentary magazine.