The live-editing workshop is an integral part of each year’s Critics Campus, and this year, four members of the cohort were assigned Paula Tomás Marques’s form-defying feature debut Two Times João Liberada. After penning their reviews, the participants sat through an intensive revision session with critic, essayist and editor Michael Sun. Read their final reviews below.
 

By Amelia Leonard

Doing justice to the past is no easy feat. How do we know if the dead are happy with the way we’ve told their stories? How do we know if they even want these to be told at all? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you – at least, in Paula Tomás Marques’s playful yet prodding feature debut, Two Times João Liberada. Part quasi-historical drama, part essay film, part ghost story, it offers answers that are far from straightforward, and makes the very conventions of representation into both its subject and its mode.

Co-written by its lead, Two Times João Liberada follows João (June João), a trans actress who jumps at the role of a persecuted 18th-century gender nonconformist in an arthouse biopic. By all accounts, it should be a dream project – a queer protagonist, an LGBTQIA+ crew. But, of course, it’s too good to be true, and the project’s cis-male director Diogo (André Tecedeiro) proves solely interested in the more tragic aspects of the life of his subject, João Liberada.

Dissatisfied with the production's direction, João’s focus diverts from her acting duties to advocating for Liberada’s rightful portrayal. Born of a guilty conscience, Liberada’s spirit steps onto the scene, taunting the actor and the crew through their dreams – the past, quite literally, fighting back. When an inexplicable event sidelines the production’s director, João seizes the chance to reroute the narrative’s course and, in her own way, set history right.

It’s hardly a stretch to say that cis men have long fetishised the suffering of women and gender-diverse people onscreen. Too often, filmmakers mine the pain of marginalised figures under the guise of cinematic merit. Marques homes in on this dynamic with a sardonic air by depicting the awkward rehearsal of a rape scene, in which Diogo methodically maps out the action: a man emerges from a dark wood while Liberada, weary from her travels, makes a pithy attempt to resist his advances. João, though measured in her delivery, questions why her character is so quickly rendered helpless. It’s a subtle but telling moment, laying bare men’s reluctance to embrace the perspectives of those they are attempting to depict, instead preferencing worn, harmful tropes. Yet, rather than sinking into solemnity, Marques keeps the tone light, her jabs aimed at Diogo’s pretentious pursuit of artistic prestige.

By putting its own artifice on display, Marques’s formal play transcends mere experimentation, becoming manifestly political. Depending on who holds the narrative power, the film’s metatextual grammar shifts. When Diogo directs, the imagery is polished and conventionally composed; when Liberada’s ghost appears, the footage distorts into grain, static and spectral overlays – the unreliable nature of authorship exposed. By making this process of construction and deconstruction visible, Marques crafts a cinematic analogue for the way trans and queer identities have been skewed and manipulated, both on and off the screen.

Watching João wrest Liberada’s story from those who would make a martyr of her queer ancestor is as refreshing as it is moving. The dead may not have asked to become stories but, with the right perspective, we might just be able to do them justice.

By Parth Rahatekar

Queerness onscreen has often felt like a theatre of tragedy; we see characters defined by separation, brutalisation, identity conflicts or sickness. But, even through suffering, our lives are punctuated with full-bodied laughs, chosen families – an inexplicable intimacy between them – and a sense of love’s continual reinvention. There is a distinct glory in our joy.

Rupturing the lineage of queer suffering is Paula Tomás Marques’s first feature, Two Times João Liberada. The film is impossibly lean yet abundant; over just 70 minutes, it follows a young trans actress named João (June João) as she portrays a historical figure, João Liberada, a gender-nonconforming nun. After being betrayed by her lover, Liberada was forced to go on the run from the Inquisition in 18th-century Portugal. Her story is being told, however, by a cis-male director (André Tecedeiro). Beyond their name, the Joãos share a feeling of being silenced: in the past, the Inquisition dismissed Liberada’s story, while João’s director now obstructs her from allowing her character even a shred of dignity or fighting spirit.

Two Times João Liberada’s experimentation with form is a delight; it slips between film-within-a-film sequences and João’s reality, but this asynchrony is never alienating. The light switches between a soft, golden hue during tender moments to a starker tone in scenes of sleep paralysis. In the latter, those involved in the making of this fictional film are haunted by Liberada herself, though these encounters are somewhat benign. In one of the most memorable instances, Liberada’s ghost asks João why she’s chosen to participate in a project that portrays Liberada as a “loser”. The ghost is snappy and irreverent – a far cry from the resigned figure the male director has manufactured in his retelling.

When viewed through the experience of queer joy, Marques’s movie becomes a robust critique of the queer-cinema landscape. We’re quick to want representation, but not all representation is valuable. Have our films limited our capacity to conceive of joy? There is power in reimagining what we’ve been historically denied and, in any case, a lot of queer history is imagined. I think of Jamali Kamali, a tomb in Delhi referred to colloquially as the ‘Queer Taj Mahal’, where a poet is buried alongside his purported lover; their genders are unknown, though the poetry inscribed on the tombs alludes to them being queer. A lot of us find solace in the fact that, even in a sultanate, queerness could have existed.

Two Times João Liberada seeks this legitimising power for its two heroines. At one point, João presses her director on whether it is necessary for them to show Liberada dying; this isn’t an attempt to rewrite history but to reclaim it. Amid the production’s increasingly peculiar circumstances, João is offered the opportunity to choose differently for Liberada. Like the nuns that once embraced Liberada, João finds a chorus.

By Fred Pryce

Karl Marx once wrote, “The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.” Two Times João Liberada opens with such a nightmare: the mesmerising image of a ghostly silhouette overlaid on a sterile modern bedroom. The phantom is João Liberada, an 18th-century gender-nonconforming woman and obscure historical figure who was supposedly driven to suicide by the Portuguese Inquisition; she is haunting the cast and crew of a film based on her life. This production’s star, also named João (as is her real-world actor, June João), is justifiably concerned that its director (André Tecedeiro) is relying heavily on the Inquisition’s ‘official’ documents, cementing an image of Liberada as a passive victim. Liberada’s ghost dismisses the project with a jarringly snarky “LOL”.

The stereotypically arrogant male director of the in-film biopic is intent on depicting Liberada as a casualty of violence. His camera lingers on João’s Liberada laboriously tying a rope around a rock in order to drown herself while never showing her face. In a comic touch, he muses that the scene should feel “more like Bresson” while berating João for not staying underwater long enough. His awards-bait approach to the material leads to scenes that are tedious and nauseating, and his denial of João’s artistic agency mirrors cinema’s meagre representation of trans people. He is more interested in abusing them onscreen than affording them personhood.

Two Times João Liberada director Paula Tomás Marques, a trans person herself, is more concerned with historiography than total accuracy; she wishes to escape Marx’s nightmare of a history written by the victors. She’s also a thorough researcher, and I was surprised to learn that João Liberada was not a ‘real’ figure but an amalgam of several gender-nonconforming people targeted by the Inquisition (the verisimilitude is increased by some playful woodcut-style artworks depicting Liberada). The film’s blend of truth and fiction reflects how queer history is often cobbled together from incomplete or hostile sources. Blurring boundaries is inherent to queerness; as Liberada puts it when asked about pronouns, “It all seems insufficient.”

When Liberada’s vengeful ghost disrupts the production, the crew seizes on the opportunity to make a ‘messier’ and more collaborative film that queries the terms of its own existence – the actual film the audience is watching. This ambitious stroke comes late in Two Times João Liberada’s brisk 70-minute runtime, leaving the film feeling deliberately half-formed. Though the 16mm images are often gorgeously emotional, speckled with golden summer light, the characters and the ideas they express can feel curiously detached and clinical. I wish I could watch the film that these characters aspired to make, rather than a deconstruction of why they couldn’t make it. But the intellectual potency and bold formal experimentation of Two Times João Liberada designate it as a blueprint for future films, queer and/or historical. “I also hope to be a ghost haunting you all,” contemplates João. Tedious directors should watch their backs.

By Sophie Terakes

Still, limp and silent, a young trans actress named João (June João) floats in a river. Water and tendrils of brown hair gently encircle her poised face. Evoking John Everett Millais’s painting of Ophelia, João inhabits the role of João Liberada, an 18th-century gender-nonconforming nun; Liberada is succumbing to suicide with the serene resignation of the famed pre-Raphaelite muse, her perfectly composed image mediated by João’s male director Diogo (André Tecedeiro). But the scene fractures. Rising from the stream, an exasperated João urges Diogo to spare Liberada such a grim demise. Perhaps, João imagines, Liberada saw the brilliant blue sky above her and rose from her watery grave to embrace a new life.

In her debut feature, Two Times João Liberada, Paula Tomás Marques examines, in swathes of sun-soaked colour, precisely how stories are constructed. The film follows the production of a biopic about Liberada’s life, encompassing her queer identity, ill-fated love affair and eventual suicide. But, with only contradictory historical evidence to guide him, the director fashions a tale of violence and despair. Marques evokes, with droll accuracy, the tinderbox atmosphere surrounding a film crew beset by creative and ideological disagreements.

Early on, João shoots a scene depicting Liberada’s arrival in a convent after narrowly escaping the wrath of the Portuguese Inquisition (who persecute her for her perceived gender deviance). Diogo’s aggressive close-up lingers on her weary expression, traumatised and desperate. Flashes of white cursive text, lifted from historical accounts of her life, visually press against Liberada’s skin. Even within the strictures of this frame, João’s face shines. Her eyes dart around the screen, searching for the kindly gaze of the nuns while her brow furrows in concentration, gathering fortitude. June João’s phenomenally expressive performance threads subject and performer together, her protagonist offering glimmers of Liberada’s strength among her anguish.

Furious with Diogo’s approach, the spirit of Liberada appears to João as a vibrating blaze of light. She speaks with a modern, online-inflected vocabulary and urges the film’s star to restore her agency and resilience. After João’s efforts are ignored, Liberada’s vengeful ghost paralyses the director with her spectral powers, causing his body to quiver and blur.

Marques’s deft, multilayered approach also extends to her portrayal of gender. While wandering around her bedroom, João reads an account from Liberada’s lover asserting that “her throat, her walk, her talk” made evident that she was a woman. Yet other fragments, conveniently elided by Diogo, emphasise her masculinity or gender ambiguity. Just as Liberada’s life is skewed and reframed by various players, her gender proves highly contestable. The link between the human body and cinema is poignantly underscored in Two Times João Liberada’s opening credits, which intersperse João’s mirrored reflection with rippling black frames. Artefacts bleed and blur into one another, mutating across the screen. Celluloid, like the body, is its own malleable canvas.

Two Times João Liberada screens on Monday 11 and Wednesday 20 August as part of the MIFF 2025 program.

The above has been written as part of MIFF’s Critics Campus program. The opinions expressed are the authors’ and do not necessarily reflect that of the festival.