Vera y Victoria

Director: Gema Sanz Calvo
Release Year: 2015

In the documentary Vera y Victoria, Spanish photographer and visual artist Mar Sáez offers a moving and deeply intimate portrayal of love, identity, and resilience. Through the lives of Vera and Victoria, two women who dared to live openly and defiantly against societal norms, Sáez builds more than just a photographic essay, she constructs a visual diary of affection, authenticity, and the subtle negotiations of shared life.

 

At its core, Vera y Victoria is a love story, but not one wrapped in clichés or tidy endings. Instead, it is a raw and poetic chronicle of two people, Vera, a transgender woman with a background in Classical Philology and a gentle love for animals and vegetarianism, and Victoria, a vivacious whirlwind who bounced between temp jobs and melted at Vera’s spontaneous gestures of affection. Their relationship blooms and shifts over four years, oscillating between moments of joy and difficulty, togetherness and distance, in ways that mirror the complexities of any deeply felt human bond. What sets Vera y Victoria apart is not just the uniqueness of the relationship it documents, but the way Sáez tells the story. As the photographer herself notes, this work is born from a profound level of intimacy, not just between Vera and Victoria, but between them and Sáez as well. She did not remain a passive observer behind the lens. Rather, she embedded herself into their world, becoming a witness, a confidante, and in many ways, a participant in the emotional universe of her subjects. The result is not just a photographic project, but a collaborative act of trust. Sáez’s work here is a powerful contribution to the fight for transgender visibility and human rights.

 

At a time when trans narratives are often flattened or sensationalized by mainstream media, Vera y Victoria refuses to conform to easy tropes. It neither exoticizes nor victimizes its subjects. Instead, it captures them in their contradictions and beauty: laughing, loving, arguing, and dreaming. Through Vera, Sáez offers a nuanced and deeply human representation of a transgender woman, someone shaped by her past and fully engaged in her present, striving not just for acceptance, but for love, autonomy, and joy. And through Victoria, the viewer witnesses how love can be an act of revolution, of embracing someone fully and vulnerably, across boundaries, discomforts, and societal expectations. The documentary also raises questions about identity, gender, and couplehood. Vera and Victoria do not dissolve into one another, as some romantic stories might portray. Their bond, as Sáez illustrates, is based on understanding and a shared direction, but not at the cost of individuality. Both women retain their distinct voices and personalities, even when their paths converge or clash. This balance between unity and independence becomes one of the most powerful threads in Sáez’s work.

 

From a visual standpoint, Vera y Victoria is subtle yet evocative. The images are often quiet, soft gazes, blurred motion, the intimacy of bodies caught in unguarded moments. There is nothing forced or staged. Sáez uses her camera with the sensitivity of someone who has spent years observing from the inside. Every photograph feels like a page from a visual journal, documenting not just events, but moods, textures, and emotional landscapes. The significance of this project extends beyond its artistic merits. In an era where the rights and lives of transgender people are still under threat across much of the world, Vera y Victoria becomes a quiet but firm act of resistance. By choosing to focus on the everyday, on love, routine, disagreement, and celebration, Sáez reminds us that transgender people are not "others," but simply human. Their love stories deserve to be told, their complexities seen, and their lives respected.

This work is also reflective of Sáez’s broader artistic philosophy. With a background in both Psychology and Audiovisual Communication from the University of Valencia, she brings a multidisciplinary approach to her work. Her art is rooted in contemporary documentary photography, often examining themes of identity and biopolitics. Throughout her career, she has sought to illuminate the stories that often go untold or misrepresented, always with a documentary rigor and a compassionate lens. Mar Sáez’s work has earned her international recognition. She received a fellowship from the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome and has exhibited in prestigious venues like The Gabarron Foundation in New York, F22 Foto Space in Hong Kong, Paris Photo, and the London Art Fair. In Spain, her work has been showcased at the Círculo de Bellas Artes and the National Library, among others.

 

Vera y Victoria is not just a story of two women in love. It is a meditation on what it means to love someone while allowing them to change, to assert their identity, and to grow. It is about resisting reduction, embracing contradiction, and finding beauty in the messiness of life. And perhaps most of all, it is about seeing and being seen. In bearing witness to Vera and Victoria’s journey, Mar Sáez has given us more than a documentary, she has given us a mirror, an invitation, and a quiet revolution in images.

 

via: euforia.org.es

cultura.gob.es and imdb

Image credits: Vimeo