“Stand Out: The Ben Kjar Story” Illuminates the Power of Difference and the People Who Refuse to Look Away

Review: “Stand Out: The Ben Kjar Story” Illuminates the Power of Difference and the People Who Refuse to Look Away

Tanner Christensen’s “Stand Out: The Ben Kjar Story” begins with the medical facts—Crouzon syndrome, craniofacial reconstruction, years of surgeries—but quickly shifts its gaze to something far more compelling: the emotional architecture around a boy who refused to vanish into the margins of his own life. Raised in Utah, Kjar grew up with a facial difference that made him instantly recognizable in every room he entered. The film shows how that visibility brought him pain, but also how it became the foundation for a rare kind of confidence.

Christensen handles this with an unusual steadiness. He avoids the syrupy uplift that often weakens documentaries about adversity. Instead, he relies on well-placed archival footage and plainspoken interviews that allow Kjar’s early years to speak for themselves. We see the surgeries, the hospital rooms, the schoolyard cruelty. We also see his parents—loving, protective, and determined to give their son a life anchored in something sturdier than pity. The film returns repeatedly to that home, a place where Kjar felt secure enough to dream, even as he spent his days bracing for the outside world.

Those early scenes sharpen the central question articulated by his mother: how do you teach self-confidence to a child who never gets the relief of blending in?

The answer arrives in the form of a neighbor named Nate, and later, a wrestling mat. Wrestling becomes the world where Kjar discovers his footing, not because the sport erases his difference, but because it finally gives him a space where something other than his face defines him. After a major surgery, he is forced off the mat for three full years. When he returns, the film shows a young man whose internal resolve has become as important as any training regimen. His ascent—from high school standout to NCAA Division I All-American at Utah Valley University, then to a Greco-Roman world champion representing the United States—is documented through extensive archival coverage that captures both the victories and the bruising losses that shape an athlete’s life.

The documentary deepens once Kjar steps beyond competition. The film is frank about the emotional terrain of dating, faith, and the fear that his facial difference could make family life difficult or impossible. His wife speaks with rare honesty about that struggle, then lands on a line that feels like the heart of the film: “If our kids are born with Crouzon syndrome, then who better to raise them than us?” Their eight-year battle with infertility, two failed adoptions, and the eventual arrival of their son and daughter give the story a grounded emotional payoff—earned, not manufactured.

Christensen’s own relationship to Kjar becomes clear late in the film, and it adds weight rather than distraction. In his director’s statement, he describes meeting Kjar as a teenager and immediately recognizing his charisma: “He was, without question, the most popular kid in the gym.” Christensen writes that while Kjar’s facial difference may have set him apart, it was his personality that made him “stand out,” long before the film had a title. Their shared history enriches the documentary rather than compromising it. The intimacy of the storytelling feels rooted in that connection, in the director’s belief that Kjar’s life is less about adversity than about the transformative force of love, community, and the people who choose to stay close.

It’s an idea the film supports repeatedly. Kjar’s life is presented not as a solitary triumph but as a collective one. His parents, coaches, childhood friends, and later his wife shape the conditions that allow him to thrive. The film’s message—embrace difference, stand out rather than bend yourself toward invisibility—is clear without being preachy.

Award juries have taken notice. Since premiering at Slamdance, where it won the Spirit of Slamdance Award, “Stand Out” has collected audience and jury honors across the festival circuit, from Julien Dubuque’s Best Family Film to Breckenridge and Desertscape’s audience prizes and San Diego’s Best Documentary awards. These wins speak not only to the film’s craftsmanship but to its resonance with viewers who see, in Kjar’s journey, a broader meditation on resilience and the possibility of change.

While the documentary follows a familiar structure, its subject keeps it fresh. Kjar’s story could easily have been packaged as a sentimental underdog feature. Instead, Christensen delivers something sturdier and more honest—a portrait of a man who had little chance at an ordinary life and built an extraordinary one anyway.

“Stand Out” works because it refuses to glorify suffering or flatten its subject into an emblem. It offers something better: a clear-eyed account of a life shaped by difference, strengthened by community, and defined by a relentless insistence on hope.