Montreal Nouveau 2023 Review: ORLANDO, MY POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY, FInding Truth & Joy Between the Pages

If only we could all be like Orlando, the character from Virginia Woolf's novel: go to sleep for a week to effect the great transformation likely all of us have desired at some point. In Orlando's case, it's a change of sex, from cisgender male to cisgender female. As Orlando heraself notes, nothing else has changed - she is the same person, just with different parts. And yet, in much of the world today, transgender people face incredible obstacles to make that transformation into their real selves.

It's no wonder that filmmaker and philosopher Paul B. Preciado felt so drawn to the character and story, that when asked to make a film about his experiences as a transgender man, he chose to frame it through the most famous of transgender people. But Orlando, My Political Biography isn't just about Preciado's journey - he brings in other transgender people, nonbinary individuals, and they all expand on their experience through this cypher of Orlando.

We meet each of these people in turn - everyone wears the frilly collar associated with the Elizabethan era (when Orlando was born), though they are also wear what makes them comfortable - some extend the costume, some wear their own clothing. Some of them read passages from the Woolf novel, in between scenes of telling their own story - when they knew they were not the gender assigned at birth, how they sometimes struggled to figure out what exactly they were, how they still don't necessarily know, or perhaps more to the point, that humanity's obsession with finding labels means there is not a word for what they see as their gender expression or identity.

Some discuss their emotional migration, from a place of discomfort or sometimes hatred of their body and how the world forced them to exist, to a great sense of comfort and joy, once they realized and began to adapt as they needed to, into their true selves. Some make out with trees, some recreate scenes from the book. A few 'confrontations' are staged - between the transgender or nonbinary person and an official who will decide if their case merits treatment, for example. There are moments when the indivduals band together for support and advice - as they must do, in real life, since there isn't the system to support them.

Hence the subtitle 'political biography'. Transgender people are forced to be political, since almost every obstacle is against them - too many in the medical community, the justice system, the travel industry - daily reminders, big and small, that the mere act of being their true selves is one of great bravery, as it puts them in danger (often literally for their lives). These moments are shown as the frustrations they are, and how defining someone so narrowly by something as fluid and wide-ranging as gender identity is perplexing, to say the least.

Preciado and his troupe constantly refer to the 'you' - and that 'you' is Woolf, who likely did not know the impact her book would have on the transgender community. Most of the troupe introduces themselves as playing 'Orlando' - but each of these Orlandos is an individual. This dialogue, this means of communcation allows for a focus on both the individual and this community as a whole - communities full of stories. It's most heartnening to see especially two older transgender people, clearly comfortable in their skin, and very young ones - since yes, our awareness of our identity can happen young.

But Preciado always finds the joy, the love, even within the frustration and anger. There is a beauty to this film, in its richness of voices and colour, in how it seeks out the joy that comes when a transgender or nonbinary person is finally able to be who they always were. It's impossible not to smile when each of the troupe receive this confirmation. Orlando, My Political Biography is at once a series of intimate biographies, an account of what it means to transition both physically and mentally, and what being your true self means both in connection to the past and looking to the future.