Spanish with English subtitles
With Paula Dinamarca, Ingrid Mancilla, Josefina Ramírez, Camilo Carmona
This award-winning Chilean film combines documentary and fiction to explore the life of a poor transgender woman named Yermen. Her neighbors think she’s a witch, and her boyfriend is unsatisfied with their love life, but Yermen’s fire won’t be extinguished so easily. Hearing about a plastic surgery TV competition, she decides to try out to complete her gender reassignment surgery. There, Yermen meets an enigmatic woman who hopes to emulate fashion model Naomi Campbell. As the women become friends, Yermen embarks upon a path toward a major life crossroad.
Press
“An experiment in form that, in both structure and content, challenges notions of truth and authenticity, Naomi Campbell fuses fiction and nonfiction elements in telling the story of a Chilean pre-op trans woman who tries to get on a reality TV show in order to pay for her surgery. The film eschews familiar cinematic treatment of trans women, capturing its heroine's struggles and setbacks without being gloomy or depressing. The film gains gravitas through its unforced looks at class and race — the latter through the experiences of an Afro-Chilean stripper whose dreams give the film its title.” – Ernest Hardy, L.A. WEEKLY
“Naomi Campbell is a savvy critique of the assumptions—about gender, class, and beauty—that inspire that sort of talk, but it’s also an imaginative embodiment of the trans-ness it celebrates: a documentary with the structure of a fictional character study, and a sleekly shot piece of digital filmmaking punctuated by pixelated, low-grade video footage shot by Yermén herself.” – FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER
“Naomi Campbell is, first and foremost, a sensitive and touching examination of the singularities of a unique woman with a very personal — and urgent — dream, but also of the many similarities she shares with ordinary women…With a subtly fascinating cinematography and a great use of context and locations, Naomi Campbell is absorbing, profound, and authentic. Quite an uncommon combination.” – Pablo Suárez, BUENOS AIRES HERALD
“Fascinating.” – JC Alvarez, EDGE MEDIA NETWORK
About the Directors
Nicolás Videla studied Audiovisual Direction in Chile. He is director, writer, editor and photographer in various short films. Naomi Campbell, which had various nominations and recognitions, is his first feature film. Currently he is working on his second film.
Camila José Donoso was born in Chile in 1988. After studying filmmaking – where she wrote and directed short films and video performances – she released, in 2013, her first feature film
Naomi Campbell co-directed with Nicolás Videla, at the Valdivia Film Festival and CPH: DOX Festival. The movie was praised by the audience and critics during its release in Latin America and the rest of the world, including festivals like Indielisboa, FICCI, BAFICI, Distrital, DOKLeipzig, and others. In 2015, it was exhibited in the Reina Sofia Museum in Spain and in the Lincoln Center for the Art of the Real Festival in New York. Camila received the Prize for Best Documentary Direction in Cinema Tropical.
In 2013, Donoso began her third film Nona which stars her grandmother Josefina Ramírez. She has participated in script labs in “3 Puertos Cine” and in the Riviera Maya Co – Co-production Forum where she obtained the 2nd prize of the jury and also received the Tribeca Latin Fund.
In 2015, Camila moved to Mexico and shot Roshell thanks to a scholarship and the support of her producers. A year later, the film participated in the Union Docs edition residence in New York. The film opens this year in Forum Berlinale.
At the moment, Camila José Donoso runs and teaches in Transfrontera, a South American experimental film school, and collaborates directly with Ignacio Agüero.
