On election day Liad decides to give her slaves the ultimate political domination session – outdoors and in public, where she teaches them about the pillars of democracy.

Read the Run-Riot Interview with Lidia Ravviso, Artistic Director, UNCENSORED Festival.

No Democracy Here is a short film that deals with the topic of political domination. Liad, a lefty human rights defender dominatrix re-educates her right-wing-leaning obedient submissive slaves to follow upstanding leftist ethos and morals like freedom of movement, economic justice, direct democracy, and human rights by using domination practices such as humiliation, doggy-training, coercion, and administration of pain. It’s all consensual!

In the end, she forces them to engage in the ultimate political BDSM practice – voting, but only for the ‘correct’ political party, one that reflects her wishes and stands in stark opposition to theirs. The general public, which serves as a witness, interacts and reacts to the political domination and the questions that it poses in its own unpredictable ways. This film wishes to explore the meaning of ‘consent’ and ‘free will’, which are frequently used in a BDSM-context, and apply them to the context of electoral democracy and public political processes.

Liad Hussein Kantorowicz is a performance artist, activist, and perpetual migrant. Her performances deal with de-exotifying and de-mystifying the positions of so-called sexual or political deviants. In them, the body is used as a tool to transgress the boundaries of the public space, and to call into question the public‘s ‘democratic’ limitations.

Her performance work has been presented at the 10th Berlin Biennale, Athens Museum of Queer Arts AMOQA, Kampnagel Hamburg, Transmediale festival Berlin, Ljubljana’s City of Women, Berliner Festspiele, Arcola Theatre London, Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, Kabareet in Haifa/Palestine and more, and in streets, social centers and queer bars in Europe and Palestine-Israel. Her first short film NO DEMOCRACY HERE premiered at CPH:DOX and is currently touring film festivals around the world. Her first EP with her musical partner Kalpour will be released later this year. Liad is a spokesperson for sex workers’ rights and a founder of a Berlin’s peer project for migrant sex workers at Hydra e.V.