Review by Aaron Haughton

Recently crowned Best Foreign Language Film at last weekend's Oscar ceremony, A Fantastic Woman is a beautifully rendered Chilean drama that rings authentic and powerful. The story is fairly simple and calm at the surface, held together by a phenomenal debut performance by Daniela Vega, but under the quiet exterior lurks a creeping boil that is both fresh and engaging to see play out on screen. The film feels cut from the same cloth as Pedro Almodóvar and Alfred Hitchcock, but boasts a vitality all its own, which is in part due to Sebastián Lelio's focused direction and Daniela Vega's wonderfully contained performance.

Marina (Daniela Vega) is a young trans woman who works as a waitress and aspiring singer. She's in love with Orlando, who is 20 years older than her and owns a printing company. After celebrating Marina's birthday one evening, Orlando falls seriously ill and passes away just after arriving at the hospital. Marina's life is then turned upside down as she struggles for the right to be herself, as she is denied such basic human rights as attending the funeral and wake. Scrutinized by the police and Orlando's family, who mostly view her her sexual identity as an aberration, a perversion, along with the very same forces that she has spent a lifetime fighting just to become the woman she is now - a complex, strong, forthright and fantastic woman.