Being Impossible

Being Impossible (2018)

Yo, imposible

A young woman discovers she was submitted to several surgeries to correct her intersexual body as a baby. She has to find her own self outside gender binaries.

Date of release
2018-10-20
TMDB
5.5 / 10 (13)
Runtime
1h 37m
Genres
Drama
Director
Patricia Ortega

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Awards: 0 · Nominations: 1

Being Impossible is a 2018 drama film co-written and directed by Patricia Ortega. It features an intersex main character played by Colombian actress Lucía Bedoya, who has been widely praised for her performance.

Production

Ortega has said that the idea for the film, her second feature, came from societally-imposed expectations of her role and her body as a woman. She wanted to explore the life of an intersex person, and also tackle issues that resonate with people who have had to stand up to society and demand their own bodily autonomy or freedom of sexuality.

Ortega has also spoken of how she was developing the film during a time of crisis; in her own life, her mother had just been diagnosed with cancer and she was getting a divorce. She has explained that she found writing Ariel to be therapeutic, and that the character "became [her] counselor [and] helped [her] face [her] transformation".

The film was partially funded by a Venezuelan Centro Nacional Autónomo de Cinematografía grant (one of the last films to receive such), and qualified for funding from Colombia because of its Colombian-minority cast and crew. In 2015, the producers had been awarded some funding from the Meeting of Producers at the Cartagena Film Festival. Despite this, they still had to use crowdfunding to complete the film.

The film was shot on a RED Scarlet 4K, in the town of La Trampa, Mérida and Caracas, in 2016. Lead actress Lucía Bedoya was studying drama at the University of Valle during the production. The production had some problems, mostly from the Crisis in Venezuela; rampant hyperinflation quickly used up their budget, and scenes had to filmed around the constant street protests in the nation.

Being Impossible premiered at the Valladolid International Film Festival, Spain, in October 2018. Its US release was at South by Southwest in 2019; when interviewed by the festival about going there, Ortega revealed that she was told of the film's selection on the day that Juan Guaidó was announced acting President of Venezuela at the start of the Venezuelan presidential crisis, throwing her country and her work into turmoil.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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