A fiction/docu hybrid film by Daniel Donato
Production: near/by film

Agnes’ life revolves around playing badminton with her queer friends and working at a restaurant she set up inside her house with her best friend Rini. One day her younger brother Indra arrives, looking for his brother Hans. Agnes faces a dilemma, keep the lie or tell the truth about who she is. The truth could give her a chance to reconcile with her brother but it seems more difficult to reach than she thought.

Director's Statement

"When I met Agnes in 2015 in a drag café, just after my arrival in the Netherlands, I was captivated by her voice and performance. We became friends and from that moment started to collaborate together in experiments and short films. Our partnership helped me understand what I want to talk about and what kind of cinema I want to make as a filmmaker.

Call me Agnes emerged from a desire to explore how to depict queer identities in films. What would a film in which I could see myself, my friends, and the way we discuss our own stories look like?

From Agnes’ experiences we have developed fictional situations inspired by her life. Working between fiction and life, we created a place in which the actors can play different versions of themselves, relive important situations, crafting a different reality in which events of the past can be rewritten and a new future created.

Exploring the complexity of queer identity, I aimed to capture its fluid, fragmented and constantly evolving nature. By challenging the conventional concepts of classical cinema, which often rely on clearly defined characters and well-rounded, overarching narrative structures, I wanted to portray Agnes' identity in a film that is fluid, playful and inviting to a wider audience."