When a film is the only non-fiction film to screen at three major fall film festivals in a row— Telluride, Toronto, and New York Film Festival main slate— you know that film is unique and worth paying attention to. Directed by Paul B. Preciado, that film is “Orlando, My Political Philosophy,” a personal essay, historical analysis, and social manifesto documentary that weaves together elements of Virginia Woolf’s novel “Orlando: A Biography”— considered a feminist classic, it’s been written about extensively by women’s writing and gender and transgender studies scholars—with the fight for global trans rights.
NYFF describes the film as “a robust polemical inquiry into contemporary trans personhood and political disenfranchisement that points the way toward a possible utopia.”
‘Orlando’ the book also obviously inspired Sally Potter’s 1992 classic period drama fantasy, “Orlando,” starring Tilda Swinton, Billy Zane, and Quentin Crisp, so cinematic examination of these ideas already has a strong precedent.
The film has earned a ton of acclaim, with four awards won at the 2023 Berlin International Film earlier this year.
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Here’s the official synopsis:
“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.
Sideshow and Janus Films are rolling out the film in limited release, starring November 10 in New York and then November 17 in L.A. Watch the trailer below.
