A Review: Nuns, Dildos, the Inquisition, & a Trans-Femme Saint

A trans-femme shepherdess and her lover before the Inquisition gets its hold on them. © Portugal Film Distributors

Should a gender-nonconforming shepherdess be burnt at the stake for having a torrid, yet romantic affair with an ungroomed gent in her village?

“You’re darn tootin’!” you can hear Marjorie Taylor Greene bellowing. “Oh, those poor, frightened lambs! They might grow up queer! I better go shoot them.”

“I’ll join you,” pipes in Kristi Noem, who’s standing beside her. “I bet that that shepherdess stole my pocketbook between her evil acts of sodomy.”

Yes, this premise is so timely, you can readily imagine the viewers of Hannity lighting up their torches in glee and jaunting to the pyre with bags of Kraft Jet-Puffed Marshmallows. “Who brought the graham crackers?”

Sadly, for these fervent folks, the lovely herder referred to here is a fictional character in Paula Thomás Marques’s full-length feature debut, Two Times João Liberado. João, who runs around in a sack-like garb, lives during the Portuguese Inquisition, a damnable moment in history that had a longer run at devastating lives than Cats on Broadway, running from 1536 to 1821.

An offering at this year’s New Directors/New Films 2025, Two Times João Liberado has one foot in the dingy past and another in the slightly better-lit present.