In recent comments about Shiori Ito’s Oscar-nominated Black Box Diaries, fellow documentary filmmaker Miki Dezaki pointed out that documentary films should not be considered journalism but rather the viewpoint on a particular topic by the filmmaker. This isn’t to say that documentaries shouldn’t be truthful, only that no one should expect them to take any “side” other than that of the filmmaker. For sure, no viewer will argue with Agniia Galdanova’s Queendom, a documentary about the queer performance artist Gena Marvin—birth name Gennadiy Chebotanov—that it should also take into consideration the viewpoint of the Russian authorities under Vladimir Putin who make Marvin’s life a holy hell simply because of who they are and the form their art takes. Born a man, Marvin dresses up in bizarre costumes of their own making that scan as feminine to a certain extent and parades these creations in public. Anyone who knows anything about Russia right now knows that LBGTQ expressions have been criminalized as “propaganda” by the government, so Marvin’s explicitly out-there self-expression gets them into hot water again and again, sometimes with violent results; but their situation became doubly dangerous with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, since the state sees Marvin as a man and thus eligible for the draft. 

Because of these various issues, which Galdanova captures on film with as much courage as Marvin demonstrates just by walking out in public, Queendom is one of those documentaries whose making poses as many questions as the content itself. By eschewing explanatory voiceover narration, Galdanova effectively leaves these questions open, and I, for one, felt continually frustrated when important context was left out. Marvin was raised by their grandparents in the Siberian gulag town of Magadan, but is technically considered an orphan, and it might have been helpful to our understanding of Marvin’s situation to know about their parents. (At one point, their grandfather, in another outburst of anger, says they are going to die on the street “just like your mother”) Many times, Marvin is picked up by the police or other agents of the state but we rarely find out what happened to them in custody. Near the end, when Marvin is desperately trying to leave Russia—the only country they know—because their life is at risk, we aren’t really clued in to how exactly they managed to defect to France.

Galdanova likely believes these details are not important or that they may come with their own dangers for herself, so Queendom has to settle for a narrative that is sufficient without them, and in that regard the movie is both moving and shocking. Marvin doesn’t really make money from their art, another reality that frustrates her grandfather (“we live under capitalism now”), but has garnered an international following on TikTok. In fact, if their art is about anything it’s being out there in a big way, meaning it’s political by definition, and they makes a point of participating in any anti-government demonstrations they hear about. Being a backwater in the lowliest sense, Magadan offers them nothing except unique landscapes against which their getups look even more extraterrestrial, so they move to Moscow to attend beauty school, but are kicked out after the authorities harass the school about their provocations, which Galdanova samples liberally. Being the showoff they are, Marvin is almost too willing and too perfect a subject, and it’s the tension between their bold assertion of their own queer identity and the bigoted resistance of the macho-oriented Russian identity that makes the biggest impression. (Pointedly, almost all the women depicted in the movie, regardless of age, appreciate what Marvin is doing as both a person and an artist, including her grandmother, who affectionately calls them “my little oddball”) That, of course, could have been predicted by anyone, but it takes a brave and resourceful filmmaker to deliver it in such starkly incisive terms. 

In Russian. Opens Jan. 30 in Tokyo at Cinemart Shinjuku (03-5369-2831), Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551).

Queendom home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 Galdanova Film, LLC