Feminist to Know: Lucía Puenzo

Lucía Puenzo is a respected woman director who focuses on stories of queer love, bodies, and adolescence.

Puenzo was born just months after the 1976 coup which installed a period of (U.S.-facilitated) military dictatorship in Argentina marked by civil rights breaches. In the past decade, the country had contended with the discovery and deportation of a number of high-profile Nazis who had taken refuge in Argentina following the end of WWII. Puenzo was highly influenced by the associated themes of repression, eugenics, and neoliberalism that derived from the political context of her childhood.

XXY, Puenzo’s first feature film, was released in 2007 to critical acclaim. It tells the story of an intersex teenager in seaside Uruguay, focusing on issues of sexuality, gender roles, the family unit, medical intervention, and belonging. XXY avoids normative gazes to tell a story queer self-exploration that is rarely shown on screen; it places ambiguity not as a mid-point between confusion and identity but as a queer destination in and of itself. The project has been awarded in a number of festivals and award ceremonies, including winning Best Film in the 2008 Argentine Film Critics Association Awards.

Puenzo has released a number of subversive and queer films since, including El Niño Pez (2009) based on her novel of the same name which is also critically acclaimed. Her cinematic sensibility is rooted in queer phenomenology and embodiment and avoids a homonormative gaze. Through this vantage, Puenzo has established herself as a unique and important visionary who has already shifted perspectives within the industry and her audiences.