VOD film review: Our Bodies Are Your Battlefields
Review Overview
Political potency
8Uncompromising style
9Conversations between women
9Cathy Brennan | On 25, Jun 2022
Director: Isabelle Solas
Cast: Claudia, Violeta,
Certificate: TBC
Documentary, if done well, can be a powerful way to peer into the lives of others and understand their experiences. In Our Bodies Are Your Battlefields, Isabelle Solas offers a compelling view of the political struggle for trans women’s rights in Argentina.
Solas achieves this through her choice of two protagonists: Claudia and Violeta. Claudia is a veteran trans activist who struggles to incorporate trans rights into a resistant feminist movement. Violeta is also a trans activist whose role as an anthropologist sees her interviewing trans women from different parts of society. The film also captures the conversations these two women have with their families and loved ones, giving a fuller picture of their lives beyond activism.
Shot against the backdrop of the 2019 Argentine general election, Solas refuses to handhold audiences who live outside of Latin America. There’s no onscreen text to contextualise events, introduce key figures or define terminology. This decision makes it difficult for Our Bodies to attract a mainstream audience, yet it ultimately works in the film’s favour as it immerses us in the political lives of Argentine trans women. Solas does not insert herself into the footage, and her camera maintains itself as a fly on the wall. This, together with the lack of contextualisation, successfully engenders a delicate intimacy with the film’s subjects.
Historically, marginalised people such as trans women, Indigenous people, and sex workers (all of whom the film portrays) are subjected to an anthropological gaze by the camera for a presumed audience who live outside those experiences. This can render the subjects as an “other” to be pitied and fetishised by the viewer. Although Violeta’s status as an anthropologist complicates that relationship – since it is through her research that the camera is able to peer into the world of trans sex workers – Solas’ approach ably minimises the risk of these women’s lives being flattened into simplistic narratives.
Solas’ hands-off approach to filming means she is able to capture moments of understated power: a young trans lesbian who speaks with Violeta says that she only has sex with men when she is doing sex work; another young woman, who has just been released from prison, is moisturising her scarred arms while a compassionate Claudia lectures her about the dead-end of street life. If there’s one uncontested truth in the documentary, then it is that both Claudia and Violeta are committed to the well-being of their community.
Solas is able to capture the frank conversations trans women have among themselves. This is talk where the personal and political are tightly interwoven. It is always stirring to see women from different walks of life speak with the same ferocious intelligence. Yet the film is quick to remind us that such wisdom is forged through a history of marginalisation and the continuous threat of violence. The film opens with footage of tran activist Diana Sacayan’s murderer being convicted, and there is a silent pause in the middle that dwells on an impromptu memorial to trans women killed by misogynistic violence.
Poignant and unapologetically challenging, Our Bodies Are Your Battlefields is a hopeful example of intersectional feminist documentary filmmaking. It provokes a desire to learn, engage with and perhaps even change the world around us.