Gender Refugee-Themed Doc ‘We Can’t Stay Here’ In Post-Production

EXCLUSIVE: Newly established independent studio Wrong Turn Productions is backing the film We Can’t Stay Here, an upcoming documentary that follows “families under siege raising transgender children and the extraordinary lengths they will go through to protect them.”

Emmy and Peabody winner Gene Gallerano is directing the feature, which is now in post-production. The documentary explores “the journey of three sets of everyday parents as they confront an America where anti-trans laws and relentless hostility force them to make an impossible decision to keep their families safe: fight, flee or go underground…”

In 2025, the American Civil Liberties Union documented more than 600 anti-transgender bills introduced at the state level in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. At the federal level, President Trump has issued multiple executive orders curtailing trans rights since he returned to the White House, including order # 14168 that mandates federal departments “define gender as an unchangeable male-female binary determined by sex assigned at birth.” His executive order #14201 “prohibits transgender female athletes of all ages from participating in girls’ and women’s sports teams.”

The anti-trans environment has prompted hundreds of thousands of trans people to relocate to “safer” states or to move abroad since 2025, according to a survey conducted by the nonprofit Movement Advance Project and the nonpartisan NORC research institute at the University of Chicago.

We Can’t Stay Here is being produced by Wrong Turn Productions cofounders Robbie Kruithoff and William Nobel, with Academy Award winner Mollye Asher (Nomadland), and Emmy winner Pagan Harleman (The First Wave), attached as consulting producers.

“This film is personal for many of us,” Kruithoff said in a statement. “While I can never fully understand what it means to be transgender, as the gay son of two Pentecostal ministers, I experienced homelessness and the loss of community because of my identity. While volunteering at LGBTQ+ homeless shelters, I continued to hear echoes of those same struggles in the voices of young transgender people. In making this film, what surprised us most was not anti-trans opposition, but silence from our own community and industry. People and institutions that express support privately, but will not support it publicly. This project has taught us that the opposite of courage isn’t fear, it’s silence.”

Wrong Turn Productions’ Nobel commented, “The idea of an American gender refugee once seemed unimaginable, but is now a growing phenomenon. Our understanding of the world remains incomplete until we encounter the lives and experiences of others and recognize our shared humanity. This story is not meant to tell you what to think, but to show how indispensable the perspectives of others can be.”

Director Gene Gallerano served as an executive producer of the Oscar-nominated American Symphony, and co-produced Emmy winner The First Wave. His directing credits include The Yeti (2026), and the upcoming Thank You for Listening.

Regarding We Can’t Stay Here, Gallerano observes, “This story should be personal to all of us. There are American families among us forced to flee their homes to find safety. Their courage became the spark for this film. What began as these families’ crises revealed itself to be a national emergency – a moral one. The families in our film are not activists or outliers. They are teachers, community leaders, nurses, truck drivers, parents. They love their communities, voted in local elections, and raised their children in places they called home – until our government turned against them.”

Gallerano added, “This will be the most important film I will ever make. It’s a love letter to those who’ve had to leave everything behind, and a call to action for the rest of us.”

Ravi Khosla serves as executive producer of We Can’t Stay Here. Emmy winner Shelby Hougui (The First Wave, Photographer) is editing the film. The documentary’s title track, “Same Love”, is by 20x platinum and Grammy Award-winning artist Gino Barletta.

Wrong Turn Productions, launched earlier this year, is co-financing Queen of the Falls, an upcoming feature film starring Pamela Anderson and Guy Pearce, in partnership with Pedro and Agustin Almodóvar’s El Deseo, Infinity Hill, Frutacine, and Maneki Films. The studio is also attached to Philippe Parreno’s first narrative feature, Riverrun, starring Charlotte Gainsbourg, Zoe Saldaña, and Vicky Krieps, as well as Richard J. Bosner’s Devoted, starring Mena Suvari, Skeet Ulrich and Elizabeth Marvel.