Queendom

Jenna is a star. The documentary Queendom shows us her compelling sense of visual drama and performance artistry–in any just world, Jenna would be able to devote herself entirely to making art out of her life, and her life into art. But living in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Jenna is instead a target for opprobrium, bullying, and violence; her costumes are at once a subject for mockery and protective armor against an entire nation working against her. Agniia Galdanova’s documentary tells a story of struggle, as Jenna is forced to live with her loving but befuddled grandparents in Siberia and as she faces down police officers who claim that her very existence is “disturbing the peace.” The film also tells a story of triumph, hard-won and painful but real: that Jenna continues to perform, unable to imagine a world without self-expression, represents a sort of resistance to tyranny. For introducing audiences to a compelling subject and matching her audacity with filmmaking brio and a brutal honesty about making art in a time of repression, Queendom wins a Peabody Award.