The film “King Car” directed by Renata Pinheiro and winner of the Gramado Festival in 2021, arrived in Brazilian cinemas this Thursday (30) and has as its protagonist Jules* Elting non-binary trans artist, was born in Germany.
Jules* was chosen one of the five most influential people in the world of arts, media and culture, according to the German platform “Prout At Work”, which highlights the cause LGBTQIA+.
Despite being on Brazilian screens, “Carro Rei” was not Jules*’s first role in the country. Before, elu participated in films such as “A Via Láctea” (2007) and “Incarnation of the Devil” (2008), already considered a modern classic by Zé do Caixão. He was also in competition at the Rio Festival with the feature film “Alguma Coisa Assim” (2017), by filmmaker Esmir Filho.
Germany X Brazil
Jules* was born in Hamburg and raised in Frankfurt. He arrived in Brazil in 2005, where he lived until 2015. Without knowing the language, he was part of the team at the Teatro Oficina company, and even so, he caught the attention of the director and the cast during a season of the troupe in Berlin.
Until then a theater artist, it was while living in Brazil that he began to work with cinema. “In Germany, everything is very segmented: who dances, dances; who acts, only acts; and so on. Here you are an artist, you think like an artist, you think about the whole”, said Jules*.
The language was learned by reading and staging Brazilian classics such as “Os Sertões”, by Euclides da Cunha, in addition to the period in which he lived with the residents of Bixiga (SP), and in the communities of São Paulo, where he made great friends and got used to the slang and local language modes.
Life in Brazil lasted ten years. “I had an appetite to take a chance again. I am a person who seeks risk, especially as an artist”, she defines, when justifying her return to Germany.
three births
Jules* considers that he has had three births in his life up to. The first was when he came into the world, the second was his immersion in art and the third was his identity.
Elu says that she always wanted to act. “It’s something that really comes from within, that’s part of me,” he says. The first professional play took place at the age of 17 and ran for two years, with more than 80 performances. In 2004, she got to know the Teatro Oficina, which was performing in Berlin. It was then that Zé Celso said that he needed a person who knew how to act and dance.
“At the Oficina, I took the husks off, little by little. The shells of German theater education. From self-limitation,” she says.
It was while living in Brazil that he linked his identity and had his third birth. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Jules* says that she needed to discover herself as an artist.
“In the lockdown, without characters, without a stage, I played my own life and immersed myself in who I am. It was through the virtual community that I went to meet other non-binary trans people, to learn terms that were unknown until then. It was a happiness and also a shock inside me. Suddenly, it all made sense,” she comments.
“And, also thinking about the unconscious, I think I needed to live in Berlin to understand who I was besides being an artist”, he continues.
Jules* stayed in Berlin during this period and returned to Brazil to record “Carro Rei”.
In addition to featuring figures such as Matheus Nachtergaele among others, the feature features Jules* in the leading role playing Mercedes, a female artist who stamps symbols against male power in a public square in the dead of night.
Jules* says that in this period of return he was immersed to characterize the character. “When I have a new role, I like to do deep dives and create the whole universe of that person, even if in the final result specific moments of this constructed world are seen.”
Identity
Knowing and assuming his identity, made Jules* dedicate himself to activism for the LGBTQIA+ cause.
In Brazil, about 2% of the Brazilian population are transgender or non-binary people, according to a study developed by the Botucatu School of Medicine of the Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp).
In all, six thousand people were interviewed in 129 municipalities in all regions of the country. In absolute numbers, this population is three million individuals.
Of this total, people identified as transgender represented 0.69% and non-binary, 1.19%.
Transgender people identify with a gender that is incongruent or different from the one they were assigned at birth. The term “non-binary” refers to individuals who feel that their gender identity is outside of, or between, male and female identities.
In the case of Jules*, elu did not understand his identity for a long time. If he considered himself happy only at work, when he took on a character.
“Off the stage I felt like an alien. I always felt like not being part of it. be from outside. Just to feel fully in my potential as a human being, and a full person, on stage,” she reflects.
Elu also emphasizes that it is still the system in which it was inserted and how humanity “erases” this existence. “We are invisibility and that’s why it’s so difficult to recognize yourself and have that moment of identification with you”, said Jules*.
“Non-binary and trans characters in contexts other than violence, death or mental disorder are rare. Understanding myself as I am brought the fear of the end of my career, of not having space or role for a person like me”, she says.
Elu says he was lucky to be part of a big movement in Germany as soon as he assumed his identity.
ActOut was a milestone in the film and drama industry, with 185 people publicly declaring themselves LGBTQIA+ shedding light on the lack of diversity on stages, scripts, recording sets.
*With information from Agência Brasil.
Source: CNN Brasil
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