Directed by Syrian-born Riad Sattouf, Jacky in the Kingdom of Women is a Cinderella story like no other. The kingdom is ruled by a female tyrant and policed by female soldiers while the men are viciously repressed. It’s “part North Korea, part tribal Afghanistan” with the genders reversed.
Enter Jacky, the prettiest boy in the village. He’s in love with La colonelle (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and is really looking forward to the upcoming ball where he may be chosen as her consort among all the eager, eligible men, waving their collars for her taking. Watch the amusing French trailer above. It has no subtitles, but you can definitely deduce that Jacky is beating off to his militant sweetheart’s portrait at 0:25.
Replete with parodic fundamentalistic Islamish imagery, the movie “skewers all sexist and absolutist notions” reverses “absurdist counter-equivalents, patriarchal assumptions of modern life” according to Variety. Jacky in the Kingdom of Women opens this year’s Montreal’s Fantasia festival.
