TRAVESTI ODYSSEY

AVAILABLE ONLINE MAY 4-7 IN USA ONLY

TRAVESTI ODYSSEY (TRAVESÍA TRAVESTI)
Nicolás Videla; 2021; Chile; 96 min.

Spanish with English subtitles

Performance and protest collide in this film that documents the final show of the Cabaret "Travesía Travesti" (Travesti Odyssey), which coincides with the social outburst in Chile on October 18th, 2019. Amid the uprising, Anastasia struggles to reunite the former members of a fractured cast, but Maraca, her best friend, does not want to continue with the play. Amnesia, a filmmaker and the last remaining artist in the company, embarks on a cinematic journey through footage and interviews of a group of friends who, behind the glitter, feathers, and beads, reveal their historical disputes and the complexities of friendship, inheritance, and collectivity in this patriarchal system.

The narration of the film moves almost seamlessly between personal, documentary, and fictional cinema, integrating the theatricality of drag shows and the physicality of postdramatic live performances. Travesti Odyssey is a piece that marks a unique aesthetic movement of gender, political, and culturally dissident groups in Chile.

This film contains the following content warnings:
VULGAR LANGUAGE, NUDITY, DISCUSSION OF TRANSPHOBIC VIOLENCE, DEPICTION OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE