Cinema of Disobedience: Avant-Drag!

Original title: Avant Drag!

92 Min. | GR | 2024

Language: OmeU | Original language: greek, albanian, russian, english

Director: Fil Ieropoulos

In the poetic documentary Avant-Drag!, we follow the lives of ten Athens-based drag performers as they create their own temporary worlds as a refuge against a hostile reality. By watching closely the lives and modes of expression of the protagonists, we get in touch with a new scene that has been blossoming in recent years and discover through them how the art of drag can transform reality and create safe spaces for people marginalised by Greek society. Avant-Drag! breaks the conventions of queer/identity documentaries that at times take a journalistic/cinematically minimal and distant, ‘objective’ approach, choosing to create instead a surreal collage in which narratives and images are built alongside the very subjects presented. A community speaks for itself without the mediation of an outsider’s gaze.