The true story of a gay couple's love
cut short by tragedy has won the Heineken Audience Award at the
Tribeca Film Festival in New York City.
“We are shocked,” Director Linda
Bloodworth Thomason, the creator of the CBS sitcom Designing
Women, told gay glossy The
Advocate. “We were so grateful to just be selected for the
festival; we never imagined we would win the audience award.
Hopefully the power of this story will propel the film into theaters
across America and beyond.”
Bridegroom documents the lives
of Shane Bitney Crone and Tom Bridegroom, who met in 2005 and vowed
to marry one day, if it became legal.
While Shane's family completely
accepted the couple, Tom's family refused to accept that he was gay.
Two years ago, Tom died in a tragic
accident and Shane was threatened and banned from the funeral by
Tom's family.
The film was introduced at the festival
by former President Bill Clinton.
“This is really on one level a
wonderful, sad, heartbreaking, yet exhilarating and life-affirming
story, and on another level, it's a story about our nation's struggle
to make one more step in forming a more perfect union, for which
marriage is both the symbol and the substance.”
(A trailer for the film is embedded on
this page. Visit
our video library for more videos.)