Chely Wright: Wish Me Away

The documentary takes up the singer Chely Wright. Wright comes out of country music. For many years she kept who she was hidden. Then she said publicly that she is gay. She became the first commercial country singer to do so. The decision shook settled assumptions in Nashville. Her family and the world around her were conservative. The hardest part was the reckoning inside herself. The film stayed close to her over two years. The video diaries she kept herself went into the film as well. The account gives her rise in the late nineties alongside the years of hiding. Then it follows how the plan to come out was carried through. The responses from Nashville, from her part of the country and from the LGBT community are inside the film. Bobbie Birleffi and Beverly Kopf’s American documentary of 2012 runs ninety seven minutes.