Ng Choon Ping, co-director of ‘Femme’: “We wanted the puppet to be provocative in relation to gender”

The Sala Fundos will host tonight, at 10.15 p.m., a film that addresses violence against the LGTBIQ+ community

The new Alchemies section will feature Ng Choon Ping , co-director with Sam H. Freeman, of Femme, a film that deals with the issue of violence against the LGTBIQ+ collective, a thriller “neither black nor white” that reflects “suffering and the causes of suffering”, in an “entertaining, a bit dark and liberating” way.

A few hours before the screening, after which he will talk with the audience, the filmmaker has offered some of the keys to his film to the Seminci.

The filmmaker praised the performances and “the chemistry” between Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, who plays Jules, a drag queen victim of a homophobic attack, and George MacKay (Preston), who doubles at the Seminci as part of the cast of Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast, in competition in the Official Selection. Both protagonists had to face “intimate and violent scenes”, in which it was important “that no one felt pressured to do something they didn’t want to do and at the same time be creative”.

The film’s story of revenge is approached, Ng Choon Ping remarked, from Jules’ perspective, “a little bit camera in hand, as if we were inside her head, as if the camera field were her field of vision”. The title of the film was intended to be “provocative in relation to gender,” alluding to the feminine with the intention of making “an exploration of that euphemism of gender, how in the toxic masculine a man has to play a role,” while Jules’ ideal is femininity, said the co-director of Femme, who urged the normalization of queer filmmakers and films.