NIGHT IN WEST TEXAS

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** Official Selection, Frameline Film Festival 2025 **

** Official Selection, Dallas International Film Festival 2025 **

Q&A WITH DIRECTOR DEBORAH S. ESQUENAZI, SUBJECT ALLISON CLAYTON AND    

KENNETH KREUSCHER, CO-DIRECTOR OF THE OREGON INNOCENCE PROJECT TO FOLLOW SCREENING.

In 1981 in Odessa, Texas, the nude body of a beloved Catholic priest was found bound and mutilated in a seedy motel room. Cops had no leads until a young gay Apache man named James Reyos suddenly called to confess. Reyos recanted, but it was too late: he was swiftly convicted and sentenced to 38 years in prison. Decades later, a local police chief uncovered buried evidence that would have exonerated Reyos in his original trial. With the support of the Innocence Project of Texas, Reyos prepares to fight to clear his name once again.

Peabody-winning director and investigative journalist Deborah S. Esquenazi whose Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four (QDoc 2016) exposed the wrongful persecution of queer women in Texas returns with another searing work of investigative filmmaking. Night in West Texas is a probing examination of the cracks in the American justice system and how one innocent man, Reyos, slipped so easily through them. Both harrowing and deeply humane, the film reveals how Reyos was vilified as a minority and how a determined community ultimately rallied to fight for the justice he deserved.

KINDLY SPONSORED BY ALBERT WU & XANDER HULL.

SUPPORTING SPONSOR TERRY CAVANAGH & THE GLOBAL RADICAL FAERIE NEWSLETTER