Thanks to everyone who took us to 100% funded— every dollar extra goes the rest of our post production expenses! Now is the time to help Claim the Lane: Becoming Roxy closer to film festival submissions!

Roxy’s decades-long leadership and commitment to the gravel community have made her an icon in central Vermont. When she plans routes, pulls in new cyclists, and puts everything on the line for her training goals, a quiet joy eases over her face. But off the bike, Roxy is coping with the impacts of military service, and planning gender-confirming surgeries that she was convinced she could never pursue after being raised in a transphobic family and culture.

Filmed over a year and half, Claim the Lane is a story of transformation, loss, and healing. We’re with Roxy as she trains and races through an unpredictable cycling season, leading up to the Vermont Overland— a grueling 55-mile, 7,000-vertical event where hundreds of entrants quit or do not finish. As the demands build, Roxy makes the decision to live the second half of her life as a woman and undergo gender-confirming surgeries.

"I have been afraid my whole life, but I've done some brave things. And if I do nothing else, I've done this for myself."

-Roxy Bombardier

As Roxy comes out and embraces her life as a woman she confronts the backlash from her conservative family, faces an estranged marriage, and an unknown future. At the Vermont Overland, Roxy's challenges are set into relief when she doesn't achieve the race results she’d been training for, and her friends are unable to support her. Even with this setback, Roxy embraces the grace of showing up as her true self, a commitment to change that pays off on the bike or just out with her friends— she finally feels at home in her body, and is making the human connections she needs to move forward.

The 2023 legislative session saw a record 508 new state laws introduced restricting access to and criminalizing providing transgender care, blocking access to youth sports participation, and more. During a period when transgender rights have become a political football, little media attention is paid to the expansiveness of individual lives. By following Roxy’s journey with attention and clarity, Claim the Lane offers an intimate and relatable portrait of the challenges we face on the road to realizing our potential.

"We as a country never paid so much attention to trans people and in a negative sense. So there's a lot at stake for trans athletes."

-Kris Hunt, Pride Rides VT

For those that don’t know anyone who’s transgender, the hope is to bring nuance to often-sensationalized storylines. Claim the Lane focuses on an individual, who like anyone else, is striving to find themselves, do right by the people they love, and create space for their passions to grow. For transgender people and allies, this film will offer representation and rich portrayal of a life that might otherwise be tallied in news statistics.

Loss, pain, and growth are themes that everyone can relate to, and through that, deepen our understanding of the people around us. “Claim the Lane” is an opportunity to create a transgender narrative that reflects the full depth of life we all share.

As a self-funded film team we've already:

• Completed over 30 location production shoots throughout Vermont
• Filmed core interviews with Roxy and members of the Vermont cycling and LGBTQ community
• Filmed three key gravel cycling events and races: The Muddy Onion, Rasputitsa Dirt, and Vermont Overland
• Captured over 75 hours of footage
• Invested in a year-long documentary storytelling workshop to hone the film's narrative
• Pitched the film to major distributors

With your help, we'll be able to go from a year and a half of production to creating a finished edit of Claim the Lane. This critical step will allow us to move to the next stages of post-production, and submit Claim the Lane: Becoming Roxy to major film festivals starting early winter 2024 and scheduling community screenings.

Every dollar over our campaign goal will go towards completing this film, and make our next round of fundraising more successful:

With $8000 we could add a professional sound mix our film.

With $6000 we could team up with a professional colorist to bring the film to life on screen.

With $5,000 we could bring on a composer to give this film the soundtrack it deserves.

With $4,000 we could pay our impact producer to continue building community relationships, bolster impact with non-profit partners, and coordinate community screenings.

The production team behind Claim the Lane has been filming Roxy since fall of 2023. Roxy has been generous with her time, openly sharing her story, her cycling dream, and hopes for moving forward in community. We believe that her story isn’t merited on sensation. Roxy's commitment to herself, her sport, and her relationships make her journey accessible and relatable in a time when transgender people aren’t afforded the same spotlight that’s aimed at the issues impacting them.

Our dedication to telling this story has brought us to this point, and now were turning to you, Roxy’s friends, kin, and fans, to help us edit this project and bring it to audiences who need to see it. $16,000 will create an edit with highest level of care and quality. $39,000 will allow us to take Claim the Lane through the full post-production process, expand our impact campaign, and bring this film to an even wider audience.

For tax-deductible donations, head to Claim the Lane's Donate Page with our fiscal sponsor, Filmmakers Collaborative SF, or reach out to Jesse directly. Please note, your donations via Filmmakers Collaborative SF can be counted toward this campaign, so feel free to use this if it suits your giving needs!

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