She Male Snails

An intriguing documentary portrait focusing on transgendered artist and writer Eli Levén (b. 1984). Director Ester Martin Bergsmark develops a shared, utterly personal topic into an experimental film. It begins with a scene of intimate relaxation in a tub of hot water that the filmmaker shares with Eli. While enjoying the bath and shaving each other’s legs, they think up a story together about a fantasy world called Pojktanten. Their focal point is a young man trapped between two genders who invents a third one in order to survive. Jaded dreams overflow into esthetic experiences of a state of being which never stops searching within itself for permanent stability – and which in the past engaged in exciting yet brutal confrontations. Shot for Swedish television, the provocatively stylized movie contains amateur black-and-white shots from Levén’s early youth. (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)