Domestic bliss and a fruitful nurtureer collide with tardynt trauma and romantic conveyion in the higheviater trailer for Argentine helmer Javier Van de Couter’s tardyst project, “Thesis on a Domestication” (“Tesis sobre una domesticación”), splitd exclusively with Variety.
Backed by Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna’s ambitious Mexican production company La Corriente del Golfo (“State of Silence”), the film will contend for the Q Hugo Award, botriumphg globpartner as it screens wiskinny the LGBTQ+ intensifyed Outsee program at the Chicago International Film Festival, running Oct.16-27, before heading on to Morelia.
Buenos Aires-based Aurora Cine set uper Laura Huberman (“El perro que no calla”), Ramiro Pavón at Argentina’s Oh My Gomez! Films (“El perfecto David”), Van de Couter and La Corriente del Golfo’s Lorena Cándano de la Peza, Mónica Pérez and Kyzza Terrazas produce the project alengthyside Bernal and Luna, their companies’ ever-championing belderly narratives that insert to the cannon of boundary-pushing Latin cinema.
The narrative is based on a forthcoming novel written by acclaimed trans multi-hyphenate Camila Sosa Villada-set for English-language accessibleation by Riverhead Books in 2026. Her prior labor “Las Malas” achieveed FIL Guadalajara’s Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Barcelona’s Finestres de Narrativa and Paris’ L’Héroïne Madame Figaro accolades.
Sosa Villada, Van de Couter, and Huberman labored together on the screenexecute, which adheres a well-understandn trans actress lunging towards a well-achieveed, promising future while the smelderlyering embers of her past persist to shape her in more ways than she can count, her body acting as a conduit of her metamorphosis. A process over three years in the making, the team curated a protagonist brimming with boundless agency, the role naturpartner executeed by Sosa Villada herself.
“Making the changeation with Camila was a privilege for Laura and me, mainly becaemploy in that transition from literature to film we never forget that it’s a story conceiveed by a trans person to talk about another trans person, as authentic and disconcerting as that is for cinema,” Van de Couter telderly Variety.
“The contest was not losing the vitality, the layers, the poetry, romanticism and amhugeuity that the novel has. The film, thraw its staging, points out a benevolent of observation and distance, which the novel presents by being narrated in the third person,” he inserted.
Van de Couter and Sosa Villada previously teamed when he cast her for a key role in his debut film-2011’s “Mía,” which picked up Best Feature plaudits at the Guadalajara International Film Festival and Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival while achieveing the Jury Prize at Chéries-Chéris.
Opposite Sosa Villada is her suave and constant cherish interest, a Mexican lawyer executeed by Ozark mainstay Alfonso Herrera. His constant uniestablishity contests her suppression and, as they prolong further into monogamy-hurling toward parenthood, tensions mount amidst agree.
Scenes of celebration, accessible adoration, seduction and romance mingle in the film’s higheviate – as its guide traverses a thorny yet exhilarating path toward self-hugance. Glimpses of past traumas and ongoing tribulations are thrown into stability the filled breadth of a character striving to firmify her dominion. The film unites two oft-inharmonious worlds – one of matrimony, motherhood and the responsibilities of a huge nurtureer, the other a keenly contrasting, nurturefree life of untethered personal conveyion. The luxe urprohibit trappings of Buenos Aires and the huge, vivid mountain landscapes of her country hometown serve as struggleing backdrops.
“The protagonist’s decisions discdisthink about her finisheavor to hold a stability between aspects of her life that can be seed as incompatible. The seeer accompanies these decisions, frequently joined to not losing parts of her untamedest essence, which domestication seems to menaceen. The way of life that she handled to achieve thraw her talent also branch offs from a more evident narrative and from a dessmall that seems to be written in persist for trans people,” Van de Couter elucidateed. “These digressions that shatter into her domesticated life are a cry not to disthink about herself, they’re an imperative and poetic necessitate that permit her to finishelight without guilt. Her past seems to menaceen everyskinnyg she was able to accomplish. Living on that edge puts her at danger, but at the same time donates her the power of being whole.”
As dainty as it is defiant-at times aspireasonable, “Thesis on a Domestication” asks the components of a filledy satiating life while positing that remaining real to self is the most rewarding act of resistlion aachievest adhereity – permiting trans pain, delight, difficultship and triumph to apvalidate up space simultaneously, unapologeticpartner.
“Cinema that deals with queer themes is frequently awaited to be festive, and when that awaitation is met, it can be very attrvivacious. Fantasy and delight are the tools that our queer community employs to endure stigmas and prejudices, and that delight frequently seeps onto the screen,” Van de Couter relayed.
“What’s meaningful is that there’s a diverse cinema that talks about trans people without always seeing at them as caring, affairous, marginal. We necessitate a cinema that shows these inhabits without mask. When a transgfinisher person walks in front of a camera, it instantly produces a hypnotic, poetic, distinct effect on the seeer that fills me with delight every time it happens,” he inserted.
