Thanks to everyone for rallying Claim the Lane to 100% on our second crowdfunder! We're onto finishing the film so we can submit to festivals and put on community screenings. Stay tuned here and on socials for the latest!

With your generous support from our first crowdfunder, we've completed our last shoots and finished editing Claim the Lane. The first few minutes are in the teaser above.

With your backing, we can finish the soundtrack, audio mixing, and color grading for Claim the Lane— the final post-production pieces needed to bring this important film across the finish line and onto screens around the country!

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 past few years have seen a record record number of state laws introduced restricting access to and criminalizing providing transgender care, blocking access to youth sports participation, and more. With the incoming administration, the transgender community is now bracing for their rights being stepped on at the state and federal levels. 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 personal journey with attention and clarity, Claim the Lane shows us how her story is universal, and points to why transgender rights need to be addressed everywhere.

"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 or diminished by political agendas.

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 and with the support of our first crowdfunding backers, we've already:

• Captured over 80 hours of footage
• Completed over 40 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
• Invested in a year-long documentary storytelling workshop to hone the film's narrative
• Conducted rough cut test screenings with Roxy's community
• Completed editing and locked picture
• Lined up a composer, audio mixing team, and a colorist
• Pitched the film to major distributors

With your help, we'll be able to take our finished edit of Claim the Lane to film festivals. These final steps of post-production will allow us to submit Claim the Lane: Becoming Roxy to major film festivals starting early February 2025, and begin to schedule community screenings.

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

With $1500 more we could submit to more festivals and bring Claim the Lane to the largest possible audience.

With $1500 more we could travel to a national festival like Framline in San Francisico, the largest LGBTQ festival in the US, connecting Roxy to audiences in person on a national level.

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. $9,000 will let us finish the edited film to the quality required by regional and national film festivals and streaming distributors. $14,000 will allow us to show this film at the most number of festivals, bring Roxy to a national film festival, and coordinate non-profit partnerships to bring Claim the Lane into communities for discussion and advocacy.

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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