
Taking inspiration from Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, writer and theorist Paul B. Preciado uses the nearly 100 year-old novel as a framework to investigate the very real contemporary struggles of trans and non-binary people. Orlando, My Political Biography blurs the borders between fiction and documentary, addressing issues of gender dysphoria, gender affirming surgery, the political construct of gender in society, and the bureaucracy that surrounds legal gender markers. Exuberant, joyful, and deeply thoughtful, this poetic cinematic essay is visually striking, thought-provoking, rooted in diverse trans and gender non-binary voices ranging from ages 8 to 70. The powerful and lively assemblage of 26 Orlandos gives voice to a community that has battled with government, medicine, society, and perceptions to freely live their own lives. This French documentary is a playful, deeply felt, original work of art; critic B Ruby Rich went so far as to call it “the first trans masterpiece.” Winner of the Teddy Award and Encounters Jury Prize at the 2023 Berlin Film Festival.
Special Jury Award, Teddy Award for Best Documentary, Berlin 2023
Community Partner
Oscar-Roza Miller, Janis Sahraoui, Liz Christin, Elios Levy, Victor Marzouk
France
2023
In French with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Sunday October 08
Indigenous & Community Access
Credits
Executive Producer
Annie Ohayon
Producer
Yaël Fogiel, Laetitia Gonzalez, Annie Ohayon-Dekel, Farid Rezkhallah
Screenwriter
Paul B. Preciado
Cinematography
Victor Zebo
Editor
Yotam Ben David
Original Music
Clara Deshayes
Director

Paul B. Preciado
Paul B. Preciado is a writer, philosopher, curator, and one of the leading thinkers in the study of gender and body politics. Preciado is the author of six novels, including ‘Pornotopia’ which won the Prix Sade in France. Orlando, My Political Biography (2023) is his directorial debut. The film was screened at the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival in 2023, and won a special Jury prize. He was born in Spain and lives in Paris.
Filmography: Orlando, My Political Biography (2023)
Spectrum
See more films in this series:
The Mother of All Lies
As her parents and grandmother prepare to leave the Casablanca home they have lived in for decades, Asmae El Moudir takes the opportunity to probe the past, unraveling repressed truths buried within her own family and Moroccan political history.
Orlando, My Political Biography
Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, the transgressive novel is used as a framework to investigate the very real contemporary struggles of trans and non-binary people. Winner of the Teddy Award and Encounters Jury Prize at Berlin Film Festival.
Between Revolutions
In a hybrid film comprised entirely of archival footage, two fictional women are torn from each other by the tides of repressive political and patriarchal systems. A haunting, lyrical tale of longing for freedom amongst connection.
Mighty Afrin: In the Time of Floods
From the floodplains of Brahmaputra River to Bangladesh’s capital city, this stunning hybrid-documentary captures the catastrophic effects of climate change upon the country’s people and landscape. Told through an orphan's personal odyssey.
The Tuba Thieves
Drawing on her experience as a d/Deaf/Hard of Hearing person, director Alison O’Daniel transcends assumptions of sound, silence, and language in this groundbreaking hybrid doc framed around a string of unsolved tuba thefts in L.A.
Hello Dankness
In the finest tradition of MAD Magazine, found footage from classic US film and television is combined to create a fictitious American neighborhood, reflecting modern American life from 2016 - 2021 in a wildly unconventional and absurdist satire.
Asog
Jaya, a teacher and comedian, travels across the typhoon-ravaged Philippines in a bid to win a beauty pageant. En route, they pick up an unlikely companion. Comic, sorrowful, and political, Asog examines the climate crisis through a kaleidoscopic lens.
Smoke Sauna Sisterhood
Within the confines of a smoke sauna deep in an Estonian forest, groups of women gather to cleanse themselves in both body and soul, sharing in traditional sauna-based rituals, while also revealing their hurts and longings, joys and pains.
Kim's Video
New York institution Kim’s Video closed its doors in 2008. Fifteen years later, filmmakers David Redmon and Ashley Sabin set out to find out what happened to the 55,000 film collection and uncover a story of corruption, deception, and intrigue.