The primary trailer has been unveiled for Luke Willis’ documentary “Girl Like,” which can have its world premiere because the closing movie of BFI Flare London LGBTQIA+ Movie Pageant.

The movie follows the story of London-born, San Francisco-based drag queen Girl Camden, AKA Rex Wheeler, as she is catapulted into the highlight on “RuPaul’s Drag Race” Season 14. Girl Camden struggles to handle the calls for of her new worldwide fame, whereas Rex is compelled to come back to phrases with the troubling childhood he left behind in Camden which drove him to so desperately search pleasure, fantasy and escape by the performing arts.

“Girl Like” is the primary function movie by Willis, whose earlier credit embrace shorts “Pool Boy” and “The Summer time Home,” each chosen at earlier BFI Flare editions. Willis produced the movie together with Cookie Walukas (“Saleh and the Spades”).

“I nonetheless bear in mind the  first time I met Rex and his infectiously joyful power. I bear in mind much more the primary time I noticed Girl Camden. I didn’t notice at first she and Rex had been one in the identical, however I immediately acknowledged that spark that I had seen in Rex and realized this was no common drag queen,” Willis says within the director’s assertion.

“As I acquired to know Rex and Girl Camden by our collaborations collectively, I noticed we had extra in widespread than I first suspected. Like Rex, I had a tough upbringing as a homosexual boy rising up within the Deep South who needed to cope with the trauma of substance abuse, home violence and psychological sickness in my household.  It was a complicated and tough childhood till I discovered my sanctuary within the  theater – identical to Rex. The theater, and finally the fantastical world of the ballet, saved me and so many others like me and Rex. It wasn’t simply an escape however it gave us goal, hope and group,” Willis added.

“When Rex and I began working collectively we bonded rapidly over our shared expertise as ballet dancers and much more over our shared aesthetic for elevated fantastical storytelling that sparkles and shimmers with magical different worldliness. It was throughout our work on the brief movie that premiered on Nowness in 2022, ‘I Don’t Want a Cause,’ that I found Rex’s story went a lot deeper than simply being a proficient performer. I noticed Girl Camden doesn’t create fantasy, magnificence, and pleasure as a result of she needs to, however as a result of she must. That was the second I made a decision to start “Girl Like,” Wilson stated.

“The previous three years of constructing artwork that celebrates loopy enjoyable campy queer pleasure with Girl Camden has been among the funnest stuff I‘ve made as a filmmaker. We now have created a gentle string of brief movies, music movies, reside exhibits, social movies and now a function documentary. What’s going to we give you subsequent? You’ll simply have to attend and see,” Wilson added.

BFI Flare unspools March 13 – 24 at London’s BFI Southbank and on streamer BFI Participant.

Watch the trailer right here: