By Hook or By Crook, shot mostly on a Mini-DV camcorder in the early days of digital cinema, is a fresh, invigorating jolt and an intimate glimpse of marginalized, yet commanding, characters from a bygone era. Directed by Harry Dodge and Silas Howard, this newly restored, San Francisco–set trans and butch buddy movie originally debuted in 2001 at Frameline, the annual San Francisco LGBTQ+ film festival, and shortly thereafter at Sundance in 2002. A limited U.S. theatrical release rolled out in 2003 to acclaim, but the film remains an underseen gem in the queer canon.

It begins with, and often returns to, an 8mm flashback of a child donning a Superman cape and T-shirt while being hoisted up by their father. Shy (Silas Howard) is now in his late twenties to early thirties, with both parents dead, and stuck in Hoxie, Kansas, where the family house is about to be repossessed. The film flits through montages of Shy and his environment as he smokes and lifts weights with bricks outside among overgrown grass. He describes himself as being like Dorothy with biceps and no dog—The Wizard of Oz will ultimately serve as a mythic template for this home-searching tale. A local news report on an armed robbery inspires Shy to don a rumpled black suit and ditch his small town for San Francisco, perhaps doing a bit of petty thieving along the way to get by.

There, late at night, while wandering through a desolate parking lot, he meets Valentine (Harry Dodge), who is being assaulted by a stranger. Shy comes to her aid, and the two, by happenstance both dressed in loose black suits, spark immediate chemistry. Under the glare of sodium lights, their initial encounter is electric—and the relationship between them ultimately emerges not as sexual or romantic, but as one of deep understanding and kinship. Valentine, perhaps neurodivergent, with a goatee of two skinny braids, is jittery, quirky, and talks in circles. With her girlfriend, Billie (Stanya Kahn), the two live in an offbeat bungalow where magazine cutouts paper the walls and a tin can dangles from the front door as a communication device.

To scrape by, Shy carries out cons that are low-level and meager. Wearing complementary Western-style shirts (one can’t help but think affectionately of Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo from Midnight Cowboy), Shy and Valentine attempt to hoodwink a hardware store clerk by trying to get money back for an expensive saw that Shy didn’t buy, but instead pulled from the shelf. There’s also a clever attempt to get quarters out of a soft drink vending machine using water guns (something I don’t think I’ve ever seen before). But Shy is not only interested in infractions for himself; he is also committed to helping Valentine find her birth mother, whom Valentine has long been searching for.

The San Francisco portrayed in By Hook or By Crook is one of late ’90s and early 2000s grungy bohemia. The film, feeling both classically timeless and of its time, slips into hostels, dingy convenience stores, and lively queer dive bars, like the Lexington Club—now gone. Many characters on the periphery are queer-coded, sometimes feeling like guardian angels for Shy and Valentine. (Joan Jett appears in a cameo and covers the celebratory Paul Westerberg song “Androgynous” over the end credits.) Shots often linger upon faces, clothes, and ’70s cars, the models of which are lovingly mentioned in the credits. The soundtrack is full of indie folk rock. Visually and thematically, the movie recalls indie, queer cinema of its era as well—evoking the iconography of Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho (sherpa-lined denim jackets, characters lying on the yellow lines of a barren road, and zigzag quests to find oneself, specifically in the American West).

The film, which feels consistently intense and alive, is a testament to Dodge and Howard as both filmmakers and performers. Howard plays Shy with complexity; his character is extraordinarily internal and often exudes a cool ease. At one point, he loses that cool—funnily enough while attempting a robbery with a hand in an empty bag of chips to pose as a gun in a convenience store—perhaps indicating that this way of life really isn’t for him after all. It’s the opposite of Dodge’s remarkable, lived-in performance, all nervy and external. It’s quite an unforgettable characterization.

By Hook or By Crook is especially refreshing in its portrayal of queerness and gender. The representation is dynamic and beautifully rendered, but the film doesn’t dwell upon, nor wallow in, conflicts of gender or queerness. There are no on-the-nose conversations about identity. Instead, the characters movingly derive their power from human connection.

By Hook or By Crook will screen June 12th–18th in New York City at Anthology Film Archives and June 16th in Los Angeles at Vidiots, before expanding to additional U.S. cities.