“Samira and Z made a hyper-intimate film about budding trans love”
“The video work manages to reach and record something about youth, love and life that you rarely come across.”
“Love, art and identity: the emotional uprising of Samira and Z”
“Transmen are not allowed to be sexy in movies - an award-winning Finnish director made a hot movie with his partner”
“We discussed trans-masculinity and performative cinema with the director and protagonist of the cinematic performance”
Interview: “Samira Elagoz, the camera and becoming”
Interview: " Samira Elagoz confronts the trauma of #metoo."
Interview: "Cineuropa talked to up-and-coming artist Samira Elagoz about her feature debut Craigslist Allstars, docu-fiction and the male and female gaze"
Review: "..quite possibly the best thing on at the Edinburgh Fringe this year… The result is piece of art that’s far more nuanced, intelligent in its consideration of sexuality and femininity than the vast majority made on the subject.”
Article: "Lyn Gardner: New voices challenge our idea of ‘good’ theatre"
Review: "...CRAIGSLIST ALLSTARS is a deeply fascinating piece of work from a fearless artist."
Review
Interview
Interview: “Samira Elagoz made a performance that is extra relevant in the light of the #metoo”
Interview
Review: “ ( ★★★★) ..engenders discomfort and forces us to question our own prejudice.”
Interview: "Craigslist Allstars contains one of this years finest movie scene"
Interview: Craigslist Allstars at Beldocs festival
Recommendation: "Craigslist Allstars is "one you absolutely must see this week"
Article: "Blooom Award Winners"
Article: "“It's uncomfortable to watch. People make personal films about family issues but who really dares to make a film like this, to put something really at stake and play a game with that. Is it a feminist film? It's perhaps a perfect example of a female gaze.”
Interview: "Performance about rape, but not a victim story"
Review: "R. Buckminster Fuller, a global thinker from way back in the pre-internet era, said: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”And that is what Ms. Elagoz has done in “Cock, Cock…Who’s There?”
Article: “One of the most important show of the year
Review: “…Elagoz’s self-presentation very intelligently exposes a taboo subject.”
Interview: "..the Finnish performance artist talks about the Internet as a platform for women, feminism and intimacy."
Interview With Alvina Chamberland
Article: "..Craigslist Allstars does not revolve around solely sexual, gender and social archeology but also tests formal limits of docu-reality setup and performance art."
“Phases of missing each other, meetings with their families and a mastectomy also find their place in their touching 13-minute film "You can't get what you want but you can get me"“
“Rumoured to be queer, provocative and emotionally intense, Seek Bromance was a must-see for me.”
Interview: "One artist, however, was ahead of the game: Samira Elagoz. Elagoz has been using the digital sphere to explore the effects of rape culture since 2015."
“In «Seek Bromance», we see our two protagonists playing with and fighting over their perspectives, while searching for words for things that cannot be said.”
“impressive and thought-provoking Seek Bromance - almost 4h, not a minute too long”
“'Seek Bromance': breathtaking romance at the end of the world”
Interview
Recommendation: "Cock, Cock.. Who's There? listed as best take on male gaze"
“Not for the faint hearted.”
“Transition dialogues: Samira Elagoz' "Seek Bromance" in the Tanzquartier”
Interview: "The film itself is a masterpiece in improvisation.. What is most refreshing about Elagoz and her work is not just its naked honesty, but also its ability to candidly subvert the narrative of being a woman captured and portrayed by a man.
Interview. All questions and replies by me, unedited.
Review: "..With visual brutality and stoic explanations full of irony, the artist submerge us into this social research, that reveals why sexuality and power are gender issues. ."
SCOTSMAN
Review: “ ( ★★★★) ..there’s an ultimate sense that consensual intimacy is still a beautiful thing"
Review: “She succeeds, she finds the moment, she confronts herself and confronts us. A complex proposal that we do not come out of unscathed.”
Review: “( ★★★★★) ..intimate and raw while simultaneously being clinical and distanced. Part experiment, part film, part f*ck you...This is the kind of theatre I want to see.”
Interview: "The camera is my partner in crime"
Interview: “..when you have seen the work you can’t but join its praisers. This is unlike anything you’ve seen before.”
Interview: "Craigslist Allstars an IDFA-favourite and one of the most exciting films at the festival"
EPISODI.FI
Review: ( ★★★★★ ) "Masterful, Craigslist Allstars is a true pearl"
Review: "Even though the performance, and specifically its topic, is very serious, it isn’t heavy or depressing, nor blaming. — It is above all strong and very clearly articulated statement on how you can recover from a traumatic experience. and how that event can be a starting point to something new, and empowering for yourself as well as to others.”
Review: "Breathtaking"
“The material presented as a video remains haunting in its authenticity”
The Finnish institute in London
Interview
Text "Lovers at the Public Execution” with Jessica Dunn Rovinelli
“..signals Elagoz as an important, rising force in the experimental art world.”
“The change from woman to man told in the trans-opera of Samira Elagoz”
"Our favorite IDFA films by female film directors"
This sequence of photos, selfies and screenshots following the chronology of a love story between two trans guys could on paper seem like a simple private slide show, but the humility of this queer bricolage and the power that these intimate and rare images take on on the big screen make this documentary vignette a peak of emotion.
Interview: "The moment I started working with camera changed everything"
Review: “(★★★★½ ) turns an archeological gaze on its audience, sexual violence, and itself.”
Review: ( ★★★★★) "The result is an indispensable documentary debut, that is not easy to categorize."
Interview: A Bold, Intimate and Powerful “Subversion of Victimhood”
“Lives up to its intentions”
Interview
Review: “Dense like a book, story line close to perfection combined with confessionalism typical to performance all produces a unique art work which after-images ja contradictions one has to ponder for long. The performance's freedom and courage, that has been refined with strong theoretical thinking still feels very radical"
“Seek Bromance reflects life, as a radical experiment with the tools: hormones, deep conversations, art, sex and healing.”
Review: “ ( ★★★★ ) This is a hard-hitting, graphic and difficult piece of theatre..”
Interview: “Raw yet elegant”
Review: “A very complex and remarkable work in which, above all, humanity is the focus.”
Review: ( ★★★★) "She assembles and edits all this into a film that is as raw-realistic as it is frivolous, as moving as it is funny, as dramatic as it is optimistic."
Review: "To make the investigation interesting is not so much the ambiguous line of demarcation between truth and fiction already experienced by many contemporary performances, but rather the provocative forcing of many stereotypes on an already widely discussed subject."
Recommendation: "What to see at Dublin Fringe?"
Recommendation: Craigslist Allstars in Poland!
Interview: “If one piece captures the complexity of #metoo, it is 'Cock, Cock ... Who's there?' from Samira Elagoz. “
Review: “Craigslist Allstars is a postmodern tale of the loneliness of man.”
Recommendations: “What not to miss at La Breda”
“Intimacy thanks to a match”
Recommendations for Impulstanz Festival
Interview with Sara Abbasi
“Samira Elagoz is known for her works that mix film and performance. In his new film, he continues to deal with masculinity – but now as a trans man.”
“I was so touched by Kiasma’s new exhibition that I passed out”
Publication: Stranger Odyssey
“..one of the most memorable and intimate works that the exhibition showcases”
“So, is it really a film? I don’t know. Is it experimental? Yes. Most importantly, does it work? Definitely, yes.”
Review: “(★★★★★ ) hyper-personal research is layered and universal”
Review: “( ★★★★★ ) Cock Cock becomes a statement of fierce defiance without ever raising its voice to a shout.
Review: “(★★★★½ )
Review: ( ★★★★★) "Sincerely and with much vulnerability, she questions sexual role patterns."
Review: ( ★★★★ )
Review: “A piece that hits the spot. Men should look at it gratefully.”
Review: "An accurate term for Elagoz’s movies would be “human gaze”. Craigslists Allstars deconstructs the male gaze without putting men under the “female gaze”. The camera is in conversation, the gaze shifts. It’s not a battle which gender’s gaze it is about.
FALKE MAGAZINE
Review: "One of the top10 Theatre works of 2017”
Review: ( ★★★★) "performance raises rage, anxiety and disbelief.. In her presence there is power and strength you rarely see."
Review: “Here is a strong demonstration of the female gaze in action.”
Interview: "Finnish films at CPH:DOX"
Review: "..on the lens of the camera and on her body, in a powerful documentary between autobiography and fiction.."
KNACK MAGAZINE
Interview
Review: “Raw yet exquisitely composed.. unapologetic in presentation of the female artists’ desires, bodies and experience..”
Interview
Review
Recommendations: “Must see films at IDFA”
DE MORGEN
Recommendation: "Five must-see shows at Theater Aan Zee festival"
Review