Right-wing soldier Monika and the trans dream maiden
This is the intro to the first part of an interview that was published in full with permitted images on November 18th 2024 in The Prisma multicultural newspaper:
https://theprisma.co.uk/2024/11/18/right-wing-soldier-monika-and-the-trans-dream-maiden/
Many young people find right-wing politics ‘cool’ today and marginal people caught between different digital bubbles find a new obstacle to being themselves. Making a film was a way to look into the personal and political story of someone changing their gender identity. It was a ‘cinema therapy’ for Monika and had a deep impact on everyone involved.
Graham Douglas
Paul Poet is an Austrian filmmaker who is interested in the psychology of the extreme-right and the impact of trauma on personal identity.
As Paul says: “People with poor self-esteem and weak identities are looking for a powerful figure and its recent increase is also a phenomenon of the digital age, which was amplified by Covid. Instead of friendships or human exchange, where ideas are discussed and negotiated, many people now live in functional bubbles where everyone is either with you or against you, and anyone who might be an enemy is cut off and eliminated from view. Trump as a person is not a real strong guy but people long for the leader as a fantasy figure”.
Poet's previous films include “My Talk with Florence” (2015) about a woman traumatized growing up in a commune, which he talked to the Prisma about, and “Auslander Raus!” (2002), a satire of racism and anti-migrant prejudice.
His filmmaking draws on psychology and the role of dreams as he works to enter the mind of conflicted people. His latest film “Soldier Monika” tells the true story with Monika’s help, of a woman who passed as a man in the Austrian army for years and changed the law on gender-recognition in Austria and Germany. She was a heroine for the anti-Covid vax conspiracy theorists, but was erased by them in Stalinist fashion when she came out as Trans.
For The Prisma, I talked with Paul and Sarah Zaharanski, one of the lead actresses, after the film was shown at Doclisboa.