Transcriber: Thanh Ngo Reviewer: Maria Pericleous
(In Greek) The question I get asked the most is...
Why am I speaking Greek?
I was supposed to do that in English.
(Applause)
Okay.
The questions that I am more frequently asked
are when did you transition, when did you come out?
When did you discover you're a woman?
At what stage of your hormonal therapy are you?
And when did you come out to your parents as a woman?
Now, the truth is
that there is no simple answer to that, I don’t have one at least,
there’s nothing wrong with the question.
But the way I view it, is like a flower.
You don’t quite see the process,
it blossoms, you get to see the final result.
So my personal journey to womanhood
is a simple process from point A to point B.
Point A, being this very well behaved kid
that would later on graduate with honors
and get their Masters in Art
and later on become the employee of the month,
a music manager
for all these corporate international major record labels.
I also got married to a cisgender woman
to get my father’s so much desired validation.
But I was lying.
My dreams and my hopes
have always been to create and express
my authentic self as I feel it.
And tonight, I get the opportunity to land on this red dot, on this red carpet,
and literally two days ago,
I was walking the red carpet of Cannes
and I saw my dreams and my hopes actually happening.
And I am so grateful for being a movie star,
but also an author and a national activist.
(Applause)
Thank you, I accept it with honors,
because I am truly grateful for the opportunity
that I got to make it,
to actually survive being a transgender girl in a small town,
and actually making it, because not a lot of people have.
But there’s one thing that I would like to do tonight,
as well as putting this seed of hope
that flourished who I am today front stage center.
There's one thing that I am struggling to accept,
and this is that she’s not here tonight with us.
For those who know,
we were traveling the world celebrating love,
celebrating an immaterial world,
revolution,
celebrating a whole new world of opportunities,
where we get to be in a united world,
and live collectively.
We went to every single Fashion Week event in Paris.
We went to every single good techno party in Ibiza.
We were being bratty and joyful,
and she was the only person I have ever fallen in love with in my life.
On January 30th, 2021,
Sophie died here in Athens.
Following the next day of the tragedy,
I found myself walking to the shore,
going to the beach
with my clothes on, unconsciously.
And it was winter, it rarely snows in Athens,
but that day was it was snowing.
But I didn’t realize, I was walking into the water with my clothes on.
And I screamed and I yelled so much,
thinking that, who am I?
I don’t recognize myself.
I am nothing like the cute persona
I was trying to portray as a public image,
I just yelled like a beast.
And I got confronted with the biggest danger
the existence - I saw myself for the first time.
I wasn’t afraid of anything, of letting everybody down,
or feeling ashamed.
Because
it doesn’t matter who I am today.
It’s so much more than a persona.
I understood what I should prioritize
is to see what I will leave behind once I’m gone.
And ever since, I started making better decisions
and decisions that helped me
pave the way towards a more fair and collective world.
The world I envisioned with Sophie.
But in order to do that, I had to go back to my soils, to my roots,
to the hometown that I was from.
And you all know where that is,
because we are in Greece, it’s Corinth.
And forget the ancient Corinth
that you might have read in historical textbooks,
because modern Corinth
is all about the town square, souvlaki and church, basically.
So somewhere there it’s me
walking hand in hand with my father,
who was the mayor of the town, literally the mayor of the town.
And I had to pretend to be the good mayor's son or anything good.
But achieving that, in that town, isn’t easy.
Because, girls, let me tell you something about Corinth.
So anything feminine in Corinth is being viewed as edible.
Anything feminine is being eaten.
I was only 12 when I was in a cafeteria with my friends
and in the restroom a girl I knew
got murdered by a soldier.
And I still remember on her face, at her funeral,
the disgusting imprint of his boot on her face.
My favorite teacher was expelled
when the local community discovered
she was a lesbian.
And people ask me how I find the confidence to talk
and to be in front of so many people
and run all the scary runways of the fashion weeks.
And the truth is,
that if I managed to walk in the promenade of Corinth without tripping,
I can walk any room securely, without any fear.
(Applause)
But I wasn’t alone in this, I had friends.
I had my chosen family.
I had support.
My parents didn’t fully accept me
although I came from a privileged home that appeared cosy,
I didn’t feel seen.
But kids that were homeless,
kids that would live under the poverty line.
There was this Albanian move of financial immigrants
that came in my country around the early zeros,
and those became my family.
We created such a strong bond because they could see me,
they could love me and I could relate to them
because they knew what it feels to be labeled,
to be seen as a stain, as a shame.
Because they know how it feels to be seen as a clown,
as just an empty shell that, you know, might crack,
and it will reveal something very scandalous, like, you know,
a traumatized little girl that has problems.
But in the matter of fact,
all those things are stereotypes that limit us
and tradition that has made us not
see ourselves.
And like the government and the institutions
have imposed labels on me,
because the Army, for example,
which is a mandatory thing for any human species in this country that has a penis,
it calls me a permanent citizen of abroad.
The Greek media
talk to me like I’m the wise owl
that will give you some eloquent information on gender studies.
And for the American media
I am a real American woman or simply the producer’s chick.
But the truth is that I’m not one thing.
None of us are.
I am an evolving creature like all of us.
And in order to wake up in the society that I have dreamt of,
I need to be today the change that I envision for tomorrow.
And we need to become the evolution.
We need to give birth to our dreams,
with our image and our word
in common view of our dreams about our future.
To give birth to a brighter future.
Look around, you guys.
There are people in this room
that could be your friends, your siblings.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but it could be your parents
that have lived a life spent on compromise,
spend on lies, in denial, not seeing themselves,
and they didn’t have the opportunity to share their story
the way that I get to share it now with you.
B
And how do you feel?
Living, and sleeping at night,
knowing that you’re reinforcing a society of wounded people
because that’s who we are.
So, if we don’t
take responsibility,
and if we don’t stand against our tyrant,
then we would have chosen their side,
the side of the one that is afraid of their own selves.
And at the end of the day,
accepting me will only liberate you
and help you express your true, authentic selves.
It’s our legal obligation and our moral obligation
to self-determination
in this country and in many European countries.
There’s still a lot of things that need to happen and there’s a lot of threats.
Being feminine hasn't been easy.
There has been a huge component of sacrifice in being feminine.
But it was worth it,
and at the end of the day, that’s what I did.
That’s who I am.
What about you?
(Applause)