Documentary about transgender teen Leelah Alcorn premiers Aug. 24 at the Woodward Theater

Anne Saker | Cincinnati Enquirer

Show Caption Hide Caption Documentary on Leelah Alcorn to premiere These images come from "Leelah's Highway," a 24-minute documentary by Canadian filmmaker Elizabeth Littlejohn, about Leelah Alcorn, the transgender teenage girl who died by suicide in December 2014 in Warren County. She left behind a note that concluded, "Fix society, please."

A documentary about Leelah Alcorn, the teenager whose death by suicide in December 2014 triggered awareness of the struggles of transgender people, is scheduled to debut in August at the Woodward Theater in Over-the-Rhine.

Filmmaker Elizabeth Littlejohn of Toronto, Ontario, said she wanted to make the 24-minute documentary "Leelah's Highway" because “as a human rights activist who believes the right for gender self-determination, I believe this story needed to be told.”

Leelah, 17, of Kings Mills and a student at Kings High School, died when she ran in front of a truck on Interstate 71 at South Lebanon in Warren County. A day later, a letter she posted on social media turned up and went viral. The letter described an isolated life with disapproving parents and sessions with a church counselor who told her that her gender identity was in opposition to Christian beliefs.

In her suicide letter, Leelah left a plea that rallied transgender activists and their allies: “Fix society, please.” That cry spurred the creation of “Leelah’s Highway,” Littlejohn said by email.

“Leelah made an explicit request that her loss was to mean something for greater society; as the director, I took this to heart,” she wrote. “This story has already been covered by international media, but the point of view of Leelah, and the community response to her loss was important to recount as part of a longer narrative focusing on her last request.”

The movie is scheduled to premiere Friday, Aug. 24 during the Cindependent Film Festival.

Littlejohn shot the movie in 2016 and 2017 in Kings Mills, at the Pride celebration in downtown Cincinnati, and during the Jan. 20, 2017, an inauguration of President Donald Trump and the next day’s Women’s March on Washington.

“Leelah’s Highway” features interviews with her neighbors, friends, Enquirer reporter Sharon Coolidge, who covered Leelah’s death and the aftermath, and Jonah Yokoyama, executive director of the Heartland Trans Wellness Center in Mount Auburn.

Littlejohn said she reached out to Leelah’s parents to participate, but they declined.

The film also focuses on Chris Fortin, a Kings High School graduate, who filled out the paperwork to get adopt-a-highway signs erected at the I-71 interchange where Leelah died that read “in memory of Leelah Alcorn.”

“It provides a good 360-degree perspective,” Fortin said of "Leelah's Highway." 'If you don’t know who Leelah is, you’ll have a better idea. You’re one Google search away from learning more. That’s why her name is on the sign. Maybe people will Google her name when they drive by and figure out what in the world happened on that December morning.”

Here's the documentary trailer: