Every frame of The People’s Joker, the debut feature from Vera Drew, drips with an anarchist spirit. In theaters now, the film began as a lark during the COVID-19 lockdown, a gag that poked fun at the endlessly rebooted Batman franchise and its iconic lead villain the Joker.
It eventually grew into a feature-length film with Drew as its lead Joker and enlisted dozens of friends and collaborators to create the dynamic, varied visual style.
Far from a cheap gag, The People’s Joker creates a one-of-a-kind comic book movie experience and a sincere, heartbreaking, and hilarious trans coming out story.
Drew plays Joker the Harlequin, an aspiring comedian whose dreams take her from the suburbs to Gotham City. There, in the grime-and-crime-ridden DC Comics capital, she navigates love, rejection, and self-expression as she slowly transforms from meek comic to cultural terrorist surrounded by other staples from the Rogues Gallery like the Penguin and Ra's al Ghul.
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