The film stars Guillermo Díaz, Frederick Weller, Brendan Corbalis, and Duane Boutte.

While the film is a work of fiction, Finch makes the unusual directorial choice of including documentary-style interview footage with several people who were at the Stonewall Inn during the uprising.

Finch also intersperses lip synch numbers performed by the actors throughout the film to function as something of a Greek chorus.

Matty Dean, a young gay man, arrives in New York City and heads for Greenwich Village.

He falls in with crossdressing sex worker La Miranda and friends, who take him to Stonewall Inn.

Ethan and Matty witness an initiation of sorts as a young man named José becomes the persona Camelia.

La Miranda is terrified because of former bad experiences with psychiatrists, so Matty dons her clothes and meets with the doctor in her place, securing a rejection from military service for her as a "sexual deviant."

At a Mattachine meeting, Matty is disgusted by the guest speaker, a psychiatrist who discourses on the then-current disease model of homosexuality, and leaves.

Vinnie points out a clinic he calls the "Palace of Dreams" and tells Bostonia that he wants her to have sex reassignment surgery so that they can marry, but she is opposed to the idea.

They have ice cream at a fancy restaurant, their open affection drawing disapproving stares, and they are asked to leave by the manager.

Then other queens fight back, touching off the riots that marked the beginning of the gay community's militant advocacy movement for its rights.