City of Queens takes an explosive look at the real lives of eight London drag queens. To be honest, you know that this film may not have anything new to offer than quite a few other similar subject documentaries that you have seen before which tell the unfiltered gritty human truth of their lives. The real stories of abuse, attacks, past trauma dealt with through unrelenting resilience behind the glamour, fun and sharp-tongued humor that these ladies present.
The inspiration behind this documentary is when the director's drag friend got beaten up on a London bus simply for existing in drag. Next day the guy decided to come back more glittery, more fabulous inspiring the film maker. The eight drag queens presented here, each have their own story, on how they ended up doing drag, what motivates to keep them going, the message they are trying to give etc. Personally for me, the one person who stood out was an Asian, brown drag who also touched upon the fact that there is even internal racism within drag. White drag queens have it much easier compared to brown and muslim drags. The stories are told in fun, fresh manner and the core the documentary tries to humanize the people who do drag without sensationalizing them. They are friends, siblings, children, they have the same feelings and fears as everyone else which they deal with through incredible resilience and glamour. They matter, they are important, and they do not deserve to be made into targets.
The film is a good fun watch and hearing everyone's stories in interesting and gives us, the audience , a unique interesting perspective. Besides the brown drag queen, the main star is of course the person behind the inspiration, especially the scenes when the mother watches her son first time in drag. I also enjoyed the scenes when on of the drag performers is trying to select a drag from thousands of his collection (that guy was by the way extremely hot). Watch this one for something fun, not necessarily very unique though. I personally would think that the stories of London drags would not be any different from the struggles of any drag queens around the world. (5/10)
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