CPH:DOX 2024 – This is Ballroom / Salão de Baile

In New York in the 1960s, there was a feud in the drag community as only white drag queens were winning beauty pageants. In the following years, non-white drags created their own competitions, and this was the birth of ballroom: a competition where performers compete in different categories such as face, runway and old way in front of three judges, trying to outdo their opponent with style and confidence. It all takes place in an infernal chaos of music, rhymes, shouts and comments from an audience that drives the atmosphere to the roof. Ballroom is a fashion show, a beauty pageant, a dance performance and a war. But most of all, it is a sanctuary where primarily queer and non-white people can get a break from a society that doesn’t have many spaces for them. But this is also a no bullshit culture. If you don’t have your moves together, you’ll get chopped by the judges and you’re out. Meet the key performers of Rio de Janeiro’s thriving ballroom scene in an upbeat, sweaty and delightfully unruly film from a parallel universe of moves and resistance.