On the steps of New York's City Hall, five aging Mothers sit in silent protest. They are the guardians of the Ballroom community - queer people who opened their hearts and homes to countless lost children, providing safe spaces for them to explore their true selves.

Through epochs of city nightlife, from draconian to liberal, the Children have been going missing, their absences ignored by the authorities and uninvestigated by the police. In a final act of dissent the Mothers have come to pray: to expose their personal struggle and commemorate their loss until justice is served. Watching from City Hall's windows is city clerk Teddy. Raised by the Mothers, he is now charged with brokering an uneasy truce. Set across the arc of the Mothers' protest and the lives behind it, This Brutal House explores a group's resilience, trauma, and determination to hold truth to power.

With echoes of James Baldwin, Marilynne Robinson and Rachel Kushner, Niven Govinden asks what happens when a generation remembered for a single, lavish decade has been forced to grow up, and what it means to be a parent in a confused and complex society.