Camila Sosa Villada’s latest film reimagines trans identity beyond pain, poverty, or even death
In Thesis on a Domestication, Camila Sosa Villada turns the tired trope of trans suffering on its head. The film, based on her own novel and co-written and performed by Villada herself, centres on a successful, wealthy, sexually liberated trans actress who seems to have everything except happiness. In doing so, it offers something rare in cinema: a trans protagonist who is alive, complicated and not defined by trauma or pity.
Writing in Revista Anfibia, trans artist and writer Donna Tefa celebrates the film’s refusal to conform to the usual formula: a trans woman kicked out of her home, prostituted, brutalised and ultimately erased. Instead, Thesis dares to imagine a trans character who is neither poor nor ornamental, but who lives, desires and struggles on her own terms. She is not a victim, but a subject. She is not only desiring, but also desired.
The protagonist’s sexual agency, often pathologised or erased in trans portrayals, is front and centre. She has sex for pleasure, not survival, a radical shift from the dominant cultural imagination that associates trans women’s sexuality solely with prostitution or abuse. Her real crisis isn’t whether she lives or dies, but how to find fulfillment in a world where desire is always shaped by others.
Yet Thesis on a Domestication doesn’t ignore trans memory or community. Ghosts from the protagonist’s past return. Her trans sister confronts her, calling her a traitor to their shared history. But this is a film about the complicated now: about surviving, thriving and still feeling that survival isn’t enough.
Tefa reads the film as a symbolic moment in trans representation: a refusal to remain stuck in narratives of pain and a call for trans creators to define new ones. Villada’s multifaceted involvement as a writer, actor and producer really underscores the argument: only by telling their own stories can trans people reimagine themselves fully. Not as symbols or lessons, but as people.
Original article (“Tesis sobre una domesticación: una travesti que viva para contarlo”) by Donna Tefa was first published in Spanish on 12 May 2025.
It is available here.
Revista Anfibia is an Argentine online magazine that blends narrative journalism, academic insight and personal essay to explore contemporary social and cultural issues with depth and innovation.
