Avant-Drag!
Director: Fil Ieropoulos
Greece, 92 minutes, 2024, documentary, experimental
Avant-Drag! offers an exhilarating look at ten Athenian drag performers who deconstruct gender, nationalism, belonging, identity, while facing police brutality, transphobia and racism. As entertaining as it is thought-provoking, Avant-Drag! challenges societal norms and reshapes perceptions about LGBTQ+ culture by capturing the intimate lives of a tightly-knit group of drag performers, proving that being othered never felt so familiar.
Trigger warning: descriptions of physical and psychological violence, medicalization, depiction/reproduction of Soviet symbols as part of the performance, depiction of blood, self harm
Film screening dates: 23.11.2024 — 8.12.2024
Director
Fil Ieropoulos was born in Athens in 1978 and grew up in northern Greece. He studied film, cultural studies, and communication at the University of North London, and Media Arts at Westminster University. In 2010, he completed his PhD in Arts and Communication at the University of Kent. Since 2003, he has been a Senior Lecturer at Buckinghamshire New University. His first feature, ORFEAS2021, premiered at Thessaloniki IFF, traveled to more than 20 festivals and galleries, and was nominated for Greek Film Academy awards. He has participated in numerous international festivals and exhibitions. His second feature, Avant-Drag!, premiered at Rotterdam IFF as the critic’s choice and traveled to more than 30 film festivals around the world, earning the title of “festival gem”.