Gender, time, class, one’s place in the world: everything is flexible in Sally Potter’s stunning second film, including Tilda Swinton’s triumphant lead performance.

In an actor/director pairing that showcases two immense British talents at their career-defining finest, Sally Potter casts Tilda Swinton in the role she was born to play: the androgynous titular character, who lives for four centuries.

First screening at MIFF in 1993 after winning three awards at the Venice Film Festival, and sumptuously adapted from Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel, Orlando follows its protagonist on a visually and emotionally eye-opening journey through English history – starting in Elizabethan times, jumping to the 20th century, and wittily exploring the role of women across a period of 400 years.

'This ravishing and witty spectacle invades the mind through eyes that are dazzled without ever being anesthetized ... a model for independent film makers who follow their own irrational muses.' – The New York Times