Throughout her over fifty-year career, German surrealist filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger (b. 1942) has forged a new and entirely unique cinematic language for fiction filmmaking. With her unconventional and wildly imaginative approach to form, performance, and visual style evident from her debut feature Madame X: An Absolute Ruler, Ottinger breaks open the traditionally male-led swashbuckling genre and produces a spectacular lesbian pirate film set on the ship Orlando, a nod to the titular protagonist of Virginia Woolf’s gender-bending novel. Ottinger, who herself has always identified as a lesbian, paces out a cathartic, singular journey for the creative, vibrant women who accompany this transformative voyage.