February 17, 2023 | Arts / Entertainment

Drag Queen fights back in new thriller

Femme is a new indie British film that is getting its big premiere next week at the Berlin Film Festival.

The film focuses on Jules (played by Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), who finds his life destroyed after being the victim of a homophobic attack. But following a chance encounter with his attacker - the closeted Preston (George MacKay) - Jules plans his revenge.

“The seed of ‘Femme’ came from our desire to flip the classic hyper-masculinity of the neo-noir thriller on its head," explained co-writers/co-directors Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping. "By putting a queer protagonist at the heart of our revenge story, we aimed to put our own stamp on a genre that we love but from which we have often felt excluded.

"However, once we started work on the film, the idea began to evolve into something that felt much bigger in scope. We realized that a queer reframing of such a hetero-centric genre was the perfect way to explore – and explode – conventional ideas of sexuality, masculinity, patriarchy, and identity.”

Check out the trailer below ...