Stockholm Film Festival

Being a chick with a dick working the unforgiving streets of Cebu City, it helps to have a few dreams. Philippine transsexual Raquel’s dream is to one day cruise the streets of Paris, turning people’s heads in awe of her beauty and femininity. All of Raquel’s lady boyfriends nurture the same kind of hope: waiting in vain for the love of a wealthy westerner to sweep them off their feet, and give them a dignified future somewhere else. After Raquela makes a name for herself posing for an American porn site, she sees an opportunity to break away from the old life as a streetwalking prostitute and travel to a Europe of endless possibilities.

Calling his film an inbetweener, a hybrid of fiction and documentary, director Olaf de Fleur Johannesson has used real-life subjects within a fictional mode of storytelling. The sophisticated and polished HD cinematography reveals the gritty environments of Cebu City and New York, and an Icelandic fish factory, in great detail, but also the beauty and warmth of its characters amidst the squalor.

Premiere Status

Swedish Premiere

Cast

Raquela Rios, Stefan Schaefer, Olivia Galudo, Brax Villa, Valerie Grand Einarsson, Markus Kalberer

Producer

Arleen Cuevas, Olaf De Fleur Johannesson, Stefan Schaefer, Helgi Sverrisson

Script

Pavel E. Smid

Cinematography

Butch Maddul

Music

Pavel E. Smid

Spoken language

English, Icelandic, Visayan, Thai

 

Other films from the Collage section

See all the festival films from 2008