Femme
Directed by Sam H. Freeman, Ng Choon Ping
Hosted by Director Sam Freeman.
Official selection
Berlin International Film Festival 2023
Director
Sam H. Freeman, Ng Choon Ping
Executive Producer
Harriet Harper-Jones, Kate Mawell, Marnie Podos, Sebastien Raybaud, David Staniland, Eva Yates
Producer
Myles Payne, Sam Ritzenberg
Writer
Sam H. Freeman, Ng Choon Ping
Cast
George Mackay, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett
Cinematographer
James Rhodes
Sound Designer
Josh Campbell
Composer
Adam Janota Bzowski
Editor
Selina Macarthur
contact
Utopia
“A stylish, commendably uncompromising fusion of genre fireworks and measured, thoughtful character study”– Guy Lodge, VARIETY
“Subversive, unsettling and sexually charged”– Wendy Ide, SCREEN DAILY
Performing as the magnificent Aphrodite Banks, Jules (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, CANDYMAN) has become one of London’s most celebrated drag artists. After a show, he steps out to get some cigarettes when he is brutally attacked by a gang of homophobic “blokes” in black-and-yellow polos and matching tattoos. Although able to recover physically, Jules withdraws from the drag race entirely, traumatized and despondent. Months later, while at a gay sauna, he recognizes a familiar face in the inviting mist: his attacker. Suddenly compelled to approach him, Jules goes one step further and begins dating his deeply closeted assailant Preston (George MacKay, 1917). He befriends him, integrates into his straight social circle… and hatches a plan for revenge.
Adapting their 2021 BAFTA-nominated short film of the same name, Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping unveil FEMME, a jaw-dropping, London-set thriller built around complex notions of identity, gender, and code-switching along lines of sexual orientation, but also race and ideology. Incredibly layered, and built around two astounding performances, this debut combines both directors’ backgrounds — Freeman’s experience in state-of-the-art television (HBO’s INDUSTRY) and Ping’s talent as a theatre director (for London’s National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and more) — into a rare cinematic powerhouse. FEMME is a perfectly calibrated queer thriller that revisits and subverts the tired trauma narrative, doubling down on the notion of performance — drag — as an innately powerful force and survival mechanism in this most riveting, emotional, almost unbearably tense revenge scenario. FEMME is one of the standouts of the year. – Ariel Esteban Cayer
Showings
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Cadillac Clown
Robin Aubert
Brimming with black humour, surrealism and freedom, CADILLAC CLOWN is the perfect oddity for Fantasia, but also the first cornerstone of Robin Aubert's cinematic oeuvre.
Sympathy for the Devil
Yuval Adler
A driver (Joel Kinnaman) is taken hostage by a passenger (Nicolas Cage) who thinks he’s been wronged in Yuval Adler’s gripping thriller that features what may be Cage’s most intense performance to date.
#Manhole
Kazuyoshi Kumakiri
Successful salesman Shunsuke falls into a concrete manhole with no immediate way out, in this clever nailbiter balancing black humour, social satire, and nerve-wracking tension.