Virginia Woolf’s Orlando tells the story of a young man who grows up to become a 36-year-old woman. Nearly a century after its release, Paul B. Preciado (for the first time behind a camera) engages in a dialogue with Virginia Woolf, acknowledging that her fictional character has transformed into reality. The transformation of Orlando’s body now underpins the experiences of all non-binary individuals, with Orlandos scattered across the globe. By amplifying the authentic voices of other young individuals undergoing metamorphosis, Preciado retraces the phases of their personal evolution through a poetic expedition, where life, literature, theory, and imagery harmonize in the pursuit of truth. Every Orlando is a transgender person who is risking his/her/their life on a daily basis as they find themselves forced to confront laws, history and psychiatry, as well as traditional notions of the family and the power of multinational pharmaceutical companies.
But if “male” and “female” are ultimately political and social fictions, Orlando, My Political Biography shows us that change is no longer just about gender, but also about poetry, love and skin colour.