Openluchtfilmfestival Roffa Mon Amour: Opening Night: Reas ²⁰²⁴

On Wednesday, 13 August we’re going to kick off the 13th edition of Roffa Mon Amour. We are going to screen a film in Roffa Mon Amour style! Get ready for a night of surprises and to walk down our red carpet. About the film Yoseli has the Eiffel Tower tattooed on her right shoulder with the words “Never Give Up”. She was caught at the airport transporting drugs in her suitcase and never made it out of Argentina. When she arrived at Buenos Aires’ women’s prison, she met Nacho, a trans man who started a rock band with fellow inmates, and Auntie Noe, a former sex worker who, like Madonna, loves to Vogue. Co-created through theatre workshops with formerly incarcerated women and trans people, our opening film Reas is a work of love and a celebration of what playfulness and community can do. Infused with mesmerizing original songs written and performed by the former inmates, this playful and colorful one-of-a-kind documentary is a testament to a group’s determination to heal from traumatic experiences. Within the walls that once confined them, those women and trans bodies are now free to dance and sing, play and imagine. Where they once endured pain and violence, they also forged unbreakable bonds of friendship and love. By playing their own roles, then those of others, they retell each other’s stories in a series of touching pop tableaux, giving them a power mixed with vulnerability. Reas is a collective work, co-created by theatre and film director Lola Arias and a group of formerly incarcerated women and trans people, challenging us to honour resilience and creativity as acts of survival. It’s in this same spirit of radical imagination and conviction that we open the 13th edition of Roffa Mon Amour with this powerful film. Reas sets the tone for our entire program and stands as a testament to what Roffa Mon Amour believes cinema must dare to be: a cinema that refuses to look away, leaves no one behind, and opens space for collective transformation.