After studying cinema at UC Berkeley (B.A.) and San Francisco State University (M.A.), Kimberly Reed was looking forward to a promising career as a filmmaker. She was a young, award-winning filmmaker (Views of My Father Weeping), had worked as a commercial editor, had traveled the world directing and producing travel documentaries, and had become an early expert in the nascent field of digital filmmaking and post-production. But then she transitioned genders and did what transsexuals are encouraged to do: She disappeared. Sequestering herself in the world of publishing, she applied her filmmaking knowledge to her position as editor-in-chief of DV magazine, and established her reputation as a frequent speaker and oft-quoted digital filmmaking expert in publications like the New York Times and USA Today. Prodigal Sons is her first feature-length documentary film, and marks her coming-out, in more ways than one.

Kimberly Reed is already recognized as the first transgender feature filmmaker. She was selected for the Yaddo Artists' Community, the Squaw Valley Community of Writers Workshop, and Al Gore's Current TV Symposium on the Future of Non-Fiction Film. Her work has been featured for four consecutive years at IFP's Independent Film Week, and she was named one of Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces of Independent Film.