Brazilian transgender icon Luana Muniz (1961–2017) serves as narrator and guide in this mesmerizing impressionist poem that takes us to the heart of Rio de Janeiro's festive nights. A sumptuous tribute to the city's queer subculture, Obscuro Barroco introduces the viewer to a land of excess and metamorphosis, where the body can both privately and publicly reinvent itself through the ecstatic gender-bending power of carnival. As the country falls back into another conservative and authoritarian period, pressing political struggles meet a desire for self-transformation that Muniz embodies with melancholic sensuality. Following her feature debut, Exotica, Erotica, Etc., Greek director Evangelia Kranioti delivers another wandering reverie that's as much a feast for the eyes and ears as it is a declaration of love to the nonconformists of the world. Charlotte Selb