Boy Erased

Boy Erased is a 2018 biographical drama written and directed by Joel Edgerton, based on Garrard Conley's 2016 memoir. Lucas Hedges plays Jared, a fictionalized version of Conley, the closeted gay son of a Baptist minister in the American South. After being outed, he is pressured by his parents, played by Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe, into a church-run conversion therapy program that claims it can change his sexual orientation. The film depicts the psychological harm of these programs, which every major medical body rejects as ineffective and dangerous. Praised for its performances and restraint, Boy Erased helped bring wider public attention to conversion therapy and the movement to ban it. Conley worked closely with the production as an advocate.