MGFF top picks

Bonnie, Amy and Kena from our team give us their top picks for the 2020 Mardi Gras Film Festival.

Bonnie

Lingua Franca. I’m excited to see the work of Isabel Sandoval, an emerging female director. An important and authentic portrayal of minority and immigrant groups that make up the heart of New York City, set in the Trump-era. Particularly, a trans woman’s experience expressed through the perspective and lens of a trans woman, is something much needed in the film world. I am drawn to films that depict the unglamorous humdrum of quotidian experiences, and Lingua Franca seems to have the potential to do just that.

Kena

For this year’s Mardi Gras Film Fest I am most looking forward to an Aussie film called Unsound, which is about a deaf trans man and a British guitarist, who wanders in to The Deaf Club, Finn’s nightclub for Deaf people. I can’t wait to see this because I am personally trans and masculine-presenting, and I’m learning Auslan (Australian Sign Language), which Unsound has in it! I’m so excited to see Auslan and Deaf culture on screen, and with characters who are going through some of my own experiences. I already have a ticket to Unsound and its afterparty.

The other one I’d really like to see is Defiant Souls (original title: Insumisas). Set in colonial Cuba, a Swiss doctor, Enrique Faber, arrives to find their missing son, marries a local woman, and gains respect in the community for their work. But Enrique’s compassion for the townspeople and open views on race and gender arouse suspicion in the patriarchal colonialist authorities of Cuba in the 1800s, and Enrique is put on trial for concealing their assigned gender. Again, this character (whom you’ve probably noted uses they/them pronouns) resonates with me, and I haven’t seen a movie set in colonial Cuba, so it would be very interesting! Defiant Souls looks dark and stormy.