Orlando, My Political Biography

Taking Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando: A Biography as its starting point, the academic virtuoso turned filmmaker Paul B. Preciado has fashioned the film, Orlando: My Political Biography, as a personal essay, historical analysis, and social manifesto which premiered and took home four prizes at Berlinale 2023. For almost a century so far, Woolf’s eponymous hero/heroine has inspired many readers for their gender fluidity across physical and spiritual metamorphoses over a 300-year lifetime. Preciado casts a diverse cross-section of more than twenty trans and non-binary individuals in the role of Orlando as they perform interpretations of scenes from the novel, weaving into Woolf’s narrative their own stories of identity and transition.