Steve Stanton had the epitome of the American Dream. As City Manager of Largo, Florida, Steve had a successful career as a public servant, where he managed a $130 million dollar budget and 1,200 employees and was respected and liked by his peers. His six-figure salary afforded a nice life for him, his wife, and son. Yet in early 2007 Steve's world came to a scratching hault when the guarded secret of his forthcoming sexual reassignment surgery was leaked to the local press. Her Name was Steven offers an unabashed look at Stanton, before, during and after her transition; with unprecedented access to family and former colleagues. This well-produced documentary is a thorough examination of Stanton’s very public battle to retain the job of City Manager while embarking on the change that had always been her dream. Though moved by Stanton's journey and the resulting loss of friends, career crisis, and media circus, this probing documentary’s honest and unbiased eye also shows Stanton’s own hand in her undoing. Her apparent love of attention, which may be as much a cause of the difficulty in finding work as is transphobia, and Stanton’s own hurtful comments about other trans people made this likely poster-child somewhat of an outcast in her own community. Two years in the making, Her Name Was Steven does an admirable job chronicling this widely discussed case and personality with a depth and scope never before seen, and giving us a front-row seat to Susan's continuing struggle to live, work, and be herself.

— Kareem Tabsch