Meu corpo é político
Alice Riff
Brazil | 2017 | 71 min
World premiere
Language : Portuguese
Subtitles : English, French
According to the Transgender Europe NGO and their global statistics, it is in Brazil that transgenders are most likely to be murdered. It is also in this country that LGBTIQ groups have organised in order to defend the fundamental right to freely choose one’s sexual orientation, notably through a fierce struggle against clichés. Alice Riff joins this fight with a sharp sense of distanced observation. My Body Is Political contradicts the habitual representations that “normal” individuals (i.e. heterosexuals) make of “trans”, always reputed to be struggling with violence and prostitution. In following the daily routine of four of them, residents of a poor suburb in Sao Paulo, the filmmaker shows to what extent the prevailing transphobia is based on no serious foundation, other than the violence, which is not always symbolic, that its victims continue to endure. The accuracy of Riff’s longtakes always hits the target, and her film is a political manifesto which subverts the very notion of normality, conceived, here, as the out-of-shot fiction of the majority.
Emmanuel Chicon
