Contrasted transgender female subjectivities (urban and rural) in two Brazilian film narratives: Laerte-se and Paloma (2017).

• Mauricio Sánchez Álvarez

This text analyzes from an anthropological perspective two Brazilian films about transgender women: the documentary Laerte-se (Barbosa da Silva and Brum, 2017) and the feature film Paloma (Gomes, 2022). Both works present contrasting contexts: Laerte is an urban artist from São Paulo, while Paloma is an agricultural worker from the rural Sertão. Despite their differences, both protagonists live their transgender identity with clarity and enjoy acceptance in their immediate environments. The review examines how these women construct spaces of survival and dignity in societies where the heterosexual pattern predominates, exploring the sociocultural factors that enable their acceptance at the microsocial level in the face of tensions at the macrosocial level.