After years in the trenches as a script supervisor, Jules Stewart has capably taken the director’s chair with her tough-minded freshman effort, K-11.

Goran Visnjic stars as decadent record producer Raymond Saxx Jr., arrested while semi-comatose from drugs, with one of his rock-star clients apparently murdered by Saxx. A corrupt prison warden (D.B. Sweeney) assigns Saxx out of general pop to K-11, a section of the L.A. County Jail for gay and trans-gendered prisoners. One of the most fascinating aspects of the film is that such a prison world actually exists; it’s well depicted in both its overwhelming harshness and off beat comraderie.

In this brutal world, Saxx bonds with the mentally unstable Butterfly (Portia Doubleday), who is being sexually abused by horrific child molester, Detroit (Tommy Lister). Through various machinations involving Saxx’s scheming about-to-divorce-him wife and other members of the K-11 section, he assists his fellow prisoners in overcoming abuse and corruption, and gets released from jail in the bargain.

A Shawshank Redemption for the gay and trans-gendered, the film is powerfully acted and strongly directed, but the script is neither quite a prison drama or a pulpy gender-bender. Let the actors pull you in, and enjoy the gritty ride.

K-11, directed by Jules Stewart open in select theaters March 15, 2013.