Orlando, My Political Biography
January 19 - 21, 2024
Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando” tells the story of a young man who grows up to become a 36-year-old woman. Almost a century after its publication, Paul B. Preciado speaks to Virginia Woolf to tell her that her fictional character has become a reality.
"Come, come! I'm sick to death of this particular self. I want another." Taking Virginia Woolf’s novel "Orlando: A Biography" as its starting point, academic virtuoso turned filmmaker Paul B. Preciado has fashioned the documentary, Orlando: My Political Biography, as a personal essay, historical analysis, and social manifesto which premiered and took home four prizes at the 2023 Berlin Film Festival. For almost a century, Woolf’s eponymous hero/heroine has inspired readers for their gender fluidity across physical and spiritual metamorphoses over a 300-year lifetime. Preciado casts a diverse cross-section of more than twenty trans and non-binary individuals in the role of Orlando as they perform interpretations of scenes from the novel, weaving into Woolf’s narrative their own stories of identity and transition. Not content to simply update a seminal work, Preciado interrogates the relevance of Orlando in the continuing struggle against anti-trans ideologies and in the fight for global trans rights.
- Original Language Title: Orlando, ma biographie politique
- Director: Paul B. Preciado
- Country: France
- Year: 2023
- Running Time: 98 min.
- Producer: Yaël Fogiel, Laetitia Gonzalez
- Screenplay: Paul B. Preciado
- Cinematographers: Victor Zébo
- Editors: Yotam Ben-David
- Music: Clara Deshayes
- Awards: Berlinale 2023 (Teddy Award)
- Language: French
- US Distributor: Sideshow / Janus Films
- International Sales: The Party Film Sales