EXCLUSIVE: Portugal-based sales firm Utopia Docs has acquired world rights to Kani Lapuerta’s feature debut Niñxs.
The film debuted in the International Feature Competition at Visions du Reel last month; and will play in the Journeys strand at Sheffield DocFest next month.
Set in the Mexican town of Tepoztlán, Niñxs follows Karla, a 15-year-old transgender girl, on her journey of self-discovery while navigating adolescence and societal gender prejudices.
The film is produced by Suleica Pineda for Mexico’s La Sandía Digital, Martha Orozco for Mexico’s MartFilms, and Dirk Manthey, Anke Petersen and Jo Beard for Germany’s Sparrows on Rooftops.
“Throughout my experience as an activist and visible trans person, I was contacted many times to be a character in documentaries on the subject,” said Lapuerta. “I got tired of always standing in front of a camera just for being a trans person, while cisgender people talked about our lives, and I decided to get the tool back and start to tell the stories of our community.”
“Kani accompanies Karla for eight years, reminding me of Boyhood - but with the director also performing on screen, among other remarkable idiosyncrasies,” said Utopia Docs founder and CEO Renato Manganello. “The film’s structure follows their freedom, featuring for instance fictional elements, besides inner conflicts reflected on the creative narration”.
Utopia specialises in documentaries from or about Latin America, with recent titles including Ana Ts’uyeb’s I Died, Ana Cristina Benitez’s Mama and Aldira Akay, Beka Munduruku and Rilcelia Akay’s Mundurukuyu – The Forest Of The Fish Women.
No comments yet