Avant-Drag! offers an exhilarating look at ten Athenian drag performers who deconstruct gender, nationalism, belonging, identity, while facing police brutality, transphobia and racism. As entertaining as it is thought-provoking, Avant-Drag! challenges societal norms and reshapes perceptions about LGBTQ+ culture by capturing the intimate lives of a tightly-knit group of drag performers, proving that being othered never felt so familiar.
Fil IEROPOULOS (1978, Greece) is a filmmaker, artist, curator and senior lecturer at Buckinghamshire New University where he teaches video art, film theory and animation. His first feature, queer sci-fi opera ORFEAS2021 (2021), premiered at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival where it competed for the Film Forward award, screened at film festivals in 14 countries and was nominated at the Hellenic Film Award. Avant-Drag! (2024) is his second feature film and will have its world premiere at IFFR 2024.