Queen Christina

Rouben Mamoulian / USA / 1933 / 99 min / English
Thursday Oct 3 at 18.30, Vattentornet Skeppsholmen

When, in 1632, the Swedish Empire crowned a six-year-old girl as the king of Sweden, they really should really have seen her future as a queer icon coming. At this year’s Cinema Queer, we’re crowning her as the monarch of our own tiny castle on Skeppsholmen, where she’ll reign supreme during a special screening of Queen Christina!

In this fictionalized biopic of Christina of Sweden, Greta Garbo stars as the titular monarch, rebelling against the gendered royal demands placed on her. One of the last films to be released before the Hays Code banned even the slightest hint of homosexuality from the silver screen, Queen Christina gives us Garbo at her queerest: cross-dressing, kissing women, and committing treason against the state of Sweden. There’s no doubt Queen Christina is a product of its time, and some of the film’s lesbianism is still a bit more subtextual than we would have liked to see. But don’t worry – we’ll rinse off Hollywood’s lingering heteronormativity with Cecilia Barriga’s Meeting of Two Queens, which finally gives our icon the on-screen lover she deserves.