Hello, and welcome to Queer is Fiction, where we discuss queer historical media.

I'm Jasmine. I'm Irene. I'm Alice.

And today we're discussing the 2023 biographical drama Cassandro.

Before we get started, I'd like to acknowledge the Bunawang Bruhnwang people of the Kulin Nation

as the traditional owners of the land on which we record this podcast and pay respect to their

elders, past and present. We recognize them as the custodians of an oral history tradition

far older than this podcast. We also have some content warnings for this episode. This episode

features mentions of the sexual abuse of children, domestic abuse, suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, and the use of homophobic slurs, in quotes.

So I first just want to say, Hi everyone.

If you're not on our Patreon, you might be a little confused by my introduction, but we haven't changed hosts.

I'm a woman, I go by Jasmine, and use exclusively she her pronouns now. In addition to the gender

update, I'm trying a new way of structuring these episodes, so let us know how you like it by

commenting on our posts or messaging us on Tumblr, Instagram, or Blue Sky. So, I'm going to

briefly describe the movie under discussion, give Alice and Irene a chance to describe their

initial reactions, as well as ask any questions they had after watching it, and then we're going to go into the historical context behind the film,

hopefully answering as many of those questions as I can along the way.

Finally, we'll return to Cassandra for a final evaluation,

looking at the decisions the filmmakers made, how their portrayal of events differs from history,

and how they depicted queerness in both a representational and narrative sense.

So, what is Cassandro? Cassandro is a

biographical drama about Saul Amandari's gay wrestler born and raised in El Paso, Texas,

who travels across the border to Juarez in Mexico to participate in Lucille-Libre wrestling.

...