Reas
Lola Arias / Argentina, Germany & Switzerland / 2024 / 82 min
A creative queer musical where the former inmates of a women's prison in Buenos Aires rewrite their own life stories and perform them as vogue and song numbers about trading cigarettes for friends and dreaming of freedom.
Yoseli is new to prison. For every cigarette she gives away, she gains a new friend, and slowly the self is blurred by a collective we. Yoseli is drawn into a diverse community. Some are hardy and others are silky smooth. Trans and cis women live a festive and loving life side by side in the small cells, and not even the rivalry between Boca Juniors and River Plate can separate them. In a joint project, they sing and perform in a musical modelled on their own lives in the middle of a prison yard in Buenos Aires. ‘Reas’ is a musical film about a community of women who rewrite their own life stories and invent a new future in the liberating setting of a theatre. Argentinian filmmaker Lola Arias returns after her award-winning debut ‘Theatre of War’ (CPH:DOX 2018) with a theatrical firework display of creativity, energy and radical empowerment.