La Corriente del Golfo, the production outfit founded by Mexican stars Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna, has taken a co-production stake in Javier Van de Couter’s “Tesis sobre una domesticación,” based on a still to be published novel by Argentine trans actress-writer Camila Sosa Villada.
In development, “Tesis sobre una domesticación” (Thesis on a Domestication) is scheduled to start production in first quarter 2023, shot in Argentina’s Buenos Aires and Córdoba.
“A dystopia far removed from the gaze with which the trans world is usually observed,” according to a producers’ statement, the film tells the story of a successful transgender actress, her husband, a brand new gay lawyer, and their adopted son, who make up a family that has gone through many tests and adaptations to be accepted as such.
The domestication from which they derive their peace will be threatened by a trip to the town where the actress’s family lives.
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Argentina’s Laura Huberman (“Alanís,” “El perro que no calla”) and Ramiro Pavón (“El perfecto David,” “El perro que no calla”) will produce, in co-production with La Corriente del Golfo.
The screen adaptation of the novel is in charge of Sosa Villada, Van de Couter and Huberman.
“The trans story is no longer that of someone who spies on us and tries to fleece our history to give away a creation that escapes from pitiful, pious and documentary. The film is a hint of a better world. Even at the cost of its principal character’s body, a trans actress with a life that she wants and that is difficult for her,” said Sosa Villada.
“I consider it necessary to think about a trans narrative in cinema, and this film is a huge possibility to immerse ourselves in a story built by the hands of a trans person to talk about another trans person, with something so authentic and disconcerting for cinema like that,” said film’s writer-director Van de Couter.
“Tesis sobre una domesticación” has already won support from INCAA, Argentina’s National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts, as well as the Imcine Mexican Film Institute through tax incentive Eficine 189, City of Buenos Aires Aires’ Cultural Patronage and Córdoba Promotion Plan for Audiovisual Production.
Sosa Villada’s previous novel “Las Malas” won FIL Guadalajara’s Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Barcelona’s Finestres de Narrativa and Paris’ L’Héroïne Madame Figaro prizes.
