The Ballad of Little Jo

After the Civil War, Josephine Monaghan, the daughter of a good family, is thrown out of the house for having a child outside marriage. She sets off west. Realising that it is impossible for a woman alone to survive out there, she cuts her hair, scars her face and starts living as a man. From then on her name is Jo and nobody knows the truth. Maggie Greenwald wrote and directed the film, taking it from a real person who lived in Silver City, Idaho: Jo Monaghan, taken for a man for years and only found to be a woman after death. The telling does not use the heroic language of the western; it describes the mud of a mining town, the loneliness and living on guard. Suzy Amis plays Jo, Ian McKellen the man on the ranch and David Chung plays Tinman.