MONSTER Closing Night Gala

Charlize Theron stars in MONSTER, a shockingly moving film that burrows deep beneath the tabloid sized headline stories on Aileen Wuornos, the man-hating-and murdering-serial killer executed last year in Florida. Director Patty Jenkins unearths a love story in the midst of the horrors and pathologies of two misfits: Wuornos, a drifter prostitute who kills many of her “johns” and Selby Ward (Christina Ricci), sent by her parents to live with an aunt in Florida in order to “cure her homosexuality.”

Nearing suicidal despair, Aileen wanders into a bar, where she meets Selby and falls in love. To keep their relationship alive, Aileen continues hooking, only to fuel an increasingly escalating deadly rage, a fury vented with a lurid string of killings and the media’s sordid designation of her as the first female serial killer-a monster.