07/02/2023 - Selected for the Encounters section, this revisiting of Virginia Woolf’s work by Spanish trans writer and activist Paul B Preciado shines bright in the French sales agent’s Berlinale line-up

The Party Film Sales have never lacked audacity or acuity in their editorial choices, ever ready to lead the way and engage on societal issues. The French international sales agent’s line-up for the European Film Market, unfolding within the 73rd Berlinale (running 16 – 26 February), and its headline film in particular, Orlando, My Political Biography [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Paul B Preciado
film profile], by Spain’s Paul B Preciado, is even further proof of this fact.

Selected in the competitive Encounters section, this documentary flirting with fiction takes Orlando as its starting point, a book written by Virginia Woolf in 1928 which was the first novel to see a main character changing sex mid-story. One century later, trans writer and activist Paul B Preciado has decided to send a film letter to Virginia Woolf: her Orlando has climbed out of her fictional storybook and is living a life she could never have imagined. Preciado organised auditions and gathered together 26 trans and non-binary folk, aged between 8 and 70 years old, to play Orlando… For the record, Paul B Preciado is a writer, philosopher, exhibition curator and one of the leading voices in gender and body politics. His books - Counter-sexual Manifesto, Testo Junkie, Pornotopia, An Apartment in Uranus, Can the Monster Speak et Dysphoria Mundi – are key reference points for contemporary art and for queer, trans and non-binary activism. Orlando, My Political Biography is produced by Les Films du Poisson (Yaël Fogiel and Laetitia Gonzalez) in co-production with 24images (Annie Ohayon and Farid Rezkallah) and Arte.

The EFM will also see The Party Film Sales team (steered by Clémence Lavigne and Samuel Blanc, and headed up by Sarah Chazelle and Etienne Ollagnier) crossing their fingers especially tight for When it Melts [+see also:
film review
interview: Veerle Baetens
film profile], by Belgium’s Veerle Baetens, which just scooped the Special Jury Prize for Best Acting Performance (Rosa Marchant) in the Sundance Film Festival’s World Cinema Dramatic competition. Two screenings of the movie are scheduled for 15 and 16 February.

Other market screenings set to steal focus are And Yet We Were All Blind [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Béatrice Pollet
film profile] by French director Béatrice Pollet (well-received in competition in Tallin and due for release in French cinemas on 8 March), the documentaries The Lost Souls of Syria [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by the duo Stéphane Malterre and Garance Le Caisne, and Paradise [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Alexander Abaturov (rewarded at the IDFA) to illustrate the cinematographic prowess of Paul Guilhaume, and The Last Queen [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Adila Bendimerad, Damien Ou…
interview: Damien Ounouri
film profile] by Damien Onouri and Adila Bendimerad (unveiled in Venice’s Giornate degli Autori).

Standing tall in post-production, meanwhile, we’ll find the mysterious Morrison by Thailand’s Phuttiphong Aroonpheng (crowned with the Best Film accolade in Venice’s 2018 Orizzonti line-up, thanks to his debut feature film Manta Ray [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]), co-produced by French firm CG Cinéma, alongside French documentary We Have a Dream [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Pascal Plisson (awarded the 2014 Best Documentary César for On the Way to School [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) who travelled all over the world (France, Kenya, Nepal, Brazil and Rwanda) to meet disabled children who prove that love, inclusive education, a sense of humour and courage can help move mountains, and that fate can sometimes be full of surprises: who says that living with a disability means giving up on our greatest dreams?

(Translated from French)