Julia Fuhr Mann

A golden summer dress in XXL, the ice-lolly drips slowly onto the hot ground. RIOT NOT DIET creates a queer feminist utopia far away from BMI norms and male* gaze. The fat women* and queers in this movie are not ashamed of their expansive body dimensions, but confidently claim space for themselves. They use their bodies to blow up patriarchal structures and enjoy their corporeality beyond the neoliberal logic of exploitation. In times of self-optimization, your belly is a statement!

If history is written by the victors, where does that leave those who were never allowed to be part of the game? A collective of queer athletes enters the Olympic Stadium in Athens and sets out to honour those who were excluded from standing on the winners’ podium. They meet Amanda Reiter, a trans* marathon runner who has to struggle with the prejudices of sports organisers, and Annet Negesa, an 800m runner who was urged by the international sports federations to undergo hormone-altering surgery. Together they create a radical poetic utopia far from the rigid gender rules found in competitive sports.