Flores nocturnas
2012 · 28m · España
Directed by Javier Giner
Genres: dark comedy, fantasy, LGBTQ+
Tones: darkly comic, surreal, whimsical
Lula, a transvestite prostitute who looks like Dorothy from Oz, and her friend Samantha survive New York's night streets in a punk, surreal fairy tale about friendship and the will to keep dreaming.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A transvestite sex worker as Dorothy—yes, *that* Dorothy—surviving NYC streets in a punk fever dream that refuses to apologize for its own weirdness or sentiment. This is exactly the kind of premise that makes people uncomfortable in the best way, where surrealism and survival become the same story.
Giner situates this squarely in the lineage of New Queer Cinema and fairy-tale subversion, with a formal precision in how he juxtaposes the mythic (Oz) against the street-level real, though the tonal balance between whimsy and despair occasionally wavers.
The singular choice here is casting a performer who genuinely embodies that Oz resemblance, which transforms every frame from conceptual gimmick into lived contradiction—a choice that costs nothing but changes everything about how the surrealism lands.