The Floating World
2021 · 15m · Spain
Directed by Fernando Souza, Pablo Curto
Genres: coming-of-age, documentary, LGBTQ+
Tones: contemplative, dark, melancholic
An immersive documentary following Ryuki, a transgender man finding his identity as a host in Tokyo's red-light district.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects this to be a reverent identity-affirming portrait, and Souza and Curto seem determined to give them something murkier—a documentary that refuses easy catharsis and sits in the contradictions of survival and self-invention without smoothing them out.
The filmmakers position this squarely in the tradition of intimate urban documentary—there's a clear lineage to Wiseman and Varda—but the formal restraint with which they frame intimacy in Tokyo's hostess culture suggests a rigor that resists both exploitation and sentimentality.
The decision to keep the camera close and sustained rather than reach for expository breadth means everything lands on Ryuki's presence and the specific textures of light and silence in those rooms—it's a film that trusts observation over explanation, and that trust is what makes it work.