Hunky Jesus

Jennifer M. Kroot’s Hunky Jesus opens from a provocation that feels almost too obvious to state, yet remains necessary all the same. Since time became Anno Domini, queerness and organised religion have too often been framed as incompatible, as though one must cancel the other out. Kroot’s documentary, centered on the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and their annual Easter Sunday celebration in San Francisco, argues instead for a third space, irreverent, theatrical, politically alert, but also genuinely spiritual.

Founded in 1979, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence emerged not as a queer-friendly church in any conventional sense, nor simply as an act of blasphemous parody, but as a form of ministry for those whom religion had wounded, excluded or burdened with shame. Their self-described mission to “expiate stigmatic guilt” may sound camp on first encounter, and camp is certainly part of the point, but Hunky Jesus makes clear that the work behind the wit is serious. Through archival material and present-day interviews, Kroot traces how the Sisters became a crucial presence in San Francisco, particularly during the AIDS epidemic, when joy, care, protest, and mutual aid were matters of survival rather than branding.

The titular event is, on its face, gloriously ridiculous. Every Easter, crowds gather at Mission Dolores Park for the Hunky Jesus competition, where contestants offer their own flamboyant, absurd, sexy, or satirical incarnations of Christ, alongside a parallel Foxy Mary contest. Winners are determined not by ballots but by sheer volume, a roaring democracy of camp in which applause becomes verdict. Kroot captures the event’s carnival atmosphere with affection, letting the pageantry unfold in all its feathered, sequinned chaos. Yet the film is careful not to reduce the Sisters to spectacle. What might sound like a joke from a distance is shown to be a cultural ritual with deep communal roots.

One of the documentary’s strengths lies in how it balances the Sisters’ drag-inflected activism with the testimony of more conventional religious figures who are themselves LGBTQ, or at least open to a broader and less punitive vision of faith. That contrast is useful. It shows that the Sisters are not merely reacting against religion, but forcing open questions of who gets to occupy spiritual space and on what terms. Kroot also touches on the renewed hostility surrounding their work, especially in an age of right-wing media outrage, where the Sisters are denounced, caricatured, and symbolically crucified for refusing the false choice between queerness and devotion.

At times, the film remains a little too contained within San Francisco, even as it gestures toward the wider international spread of the order. One senses a larger story just beyond the frame. Still, what Kroot captures here is vivid and persuasive enough on its own terms. Hunky Jesus understands that camp is not the opposite of seriousness, and that mockery, when aimed upward at institutions of guilt, can coexist with tenderness, service, and ethical conviction.

Any order that canonises figures like Lily Tomlin and Harvey Milk is already operating on a wavelength worth tuning into. But Hunky Jesus offers more than a blasphemously good time. It is a film about community as performance, performance as protest, and protest as a way of keeping both joy and dignity alive. By the end, it may even leave you with one final theological question: is the plural of Jesus Jesi?

Reviewed on: 18 Mar 2026