Sideshow and Janus Films announced March 9 that they have acquired North American rights for multi award-winning Berlinale doc Orlando, My Political Biography, written and directed by Paul B. Preciado. The film is produced by Les Films du Poisson’s Yaël Fogiel and Laetitia Gonzalez and co-produced by 24images’ Annie Ohayon and Farid Rezkallah and Arte.
The film premiered in the Berlinale Encounters Section winning 4 awards including Teddy Award for Best Documentary, Special Jury Mention in Encounters, Special Jury Mention for Best Documentary and the independent Tagspiegel Readers Award. Sideshow and Janus Films are planning a theatrical release following a run of prestigious North American film festivals.
The deal was negotiated by The Party Film Sales. In addition, Paris-based sales company announced international sales to Picturehouse (UK & Ireland), L’Atalante (Spain), Fandango (Italy), Gutek Films (Poland) and Nitrato (Portugal).
In 1928, Virginia Woolf wrote Orlando, the first novel in which the main character changes sex in the middle of the story. For Orlando, My Political Biography, director Preciado organizes a casting and gathers 26 contemporary trans and non-binary people, from 8 to 70 years old, to embody a latter day Orlando.
Peter Becker, Partner in Janus Films said, “We were blown away by Orlando, My Political Biography, a funny, smart, visually stunning film that is at once playful and deadly serious, a landmark film that will be of lasting cultural importance, both for its formal inventiveness and for the way it engages with trans identity. The energy of liberation and poetry that enlivens this film, combined with the incredible evidence of the richness, variety, and vitality of trans life it presents, is truly exhilarating.”
Sideshow and Janus Films currently have Jerzy Skolimowski’s EO in release which is nominated for the Oscar® for Best International Feature. The film recently passed $1 million dollars at the North American box office. They are also collaborating on Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes which is nominated for the Oscar® for Best Documentary Feature.
Paul B. Preciado is a writer, philosopher, curator, and one of the leading thinkers in the study of gender and body politics. Among his different assignments, he has been Curator of Public Programs of documenta 14 (Kassel/Athens), Curator of the Taiwan Pavilion in Venice in 2019, and Head of Research of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA). His books, Counter-sexual Manifesto (Columbia University Press); Testo Junkie (The Feminist Press); Pornotopia (Zone Books); An Apartment in Uranus (Semiotexte and Fitzcarraldo), and Can the Monster Speak (Semiotexte and Fitzcarraldo), and Dysphoria Mundi (Grasset, Graywolf and Fitzcarraldo) are a key reference to queer, trans and non- binary contemporary art and activism. He was born in Spain and lives in Paris.
