Lemebel

Award for Best Portrait, FIFA 2020

​“The poor don’t have closets, they have wardrobes. And I was always outside mine.” This is how Pedro Lemebel — writer, artist and pioneer of the queer movement in Latin America — approached not only his homosexuality, but also his social position. In the late 1980s, Lemebel’s work disrupted Chile’s conservative social codes under dictator Augusto Pinochet. An artist and dissenter with a razor-sharp critical mind, Lemebel spoke out and spoke up until the very end of his life when laryngeal cancer took his voice. Filmmaker Joanna Reposi spent time with Lemebel during his final years. Her recordings, interviews and archival research come together in this homage to his life and artistic career.