Orlando: My Political Biography (Paul B. Preciado, 2023)

Trigger warnings: transphobia

Awards and nominations:  it was selected in Encounter at the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival, where it had its world premiere on 18 February 2023. It was also nominated for Berlinale Documentary Film Award, and won the Teddy Award for the Best Documentary Film.

Synopsis

“Come, come! I’m sick to death of this particular self. I want another.” Taking Virginia Woolf’s novel “Orlando: A Biography” as his starting point, academic virtuoso turned filmmaker Paul B. Preciado fashioned the documentary ORLANDO, MY POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY—a personal essay, historical analysis, and social manifesto. For almost a century, Woolf’s eponymous hero(ine) has inspired readers with their gender fluidity as well as their physical and spiritual metamorphoses across a three-hundred-year span. In making his film, Preciado invited a diverse group of more than twenty trans and nonbinary people to play the role of Orlando and to participate in this shared biography. Together, they perform interpretations of the novel, weaving into Woolf’s narrative their own stories of transition and identity formation. Not content to simply update a groundbreaking work, Preciado interrogates the relevance of “Orlando” in the ongoing struggle to secure dignity for trans people worldwide. (The Criterion Chanel)