Raquela Rios in The Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela Courtesy of Poppoli Pictures

Why didn't some transsexuals want to appear on camera?
Well, as soon as you enter the world of internet porn, there are some stones you don't want to turn unless you want to make a real investigative documentary about that world. My focus was on the girls — I mean the ladyboys; I call them girls — because their environment in the Philippines is such [that] they don't go to the good schools, or they don't go to school unless they cut their hair. All society is telling them to go away, [and] the only friend they have is the porn industry. It's ridiculous to say, but the porn industry is the only one who is tapping on their shoulder and saying, "Come here, we have a job for you." Most of them go into prostitution or into internet [porn, which] is actually a blessing for them because they get off the streets. That was the case in Raquela's story.

You call this a cautionary tale, but it has almost a perversely positive message of empowerment since Raquela lives her dream of going to Paris thanks to selling her body. How did you balance these things and create such a humane work?
I'm not sure, I guess I accidentally made a feminist film with ladyboys. We can so clearly see in them the globalization of the fashion industry, beauty standards and the porn industry. With Raquela, what we usually did when shooting was ask, "What do you feel should happen next?" When we were making things up, usually it was based on something [authentic], and then we asked her what she would think. And as you see in the film, she has to go back [home to the Philippines]. It's a good ending, but still it's not. She's back in the same trap. I think the key is that I told the personal story and the social story.

Did you ever feel a documentarian's detachment from Raquela, since you were attempting to tell her tale accurately — but at the same time, construct a broader depiction of the culture itself?
I've done a lot of documentaries, and you always have your own pollution around. So I decided to use that pollution. Why can't Lars von Trier and many other great filmmakers use the documentary style? I thought, "Okay, I do documentaries, but I'm going to switch to a feature now. I'm just going to write many of the scenes. I'm going to hire actors and use the reality to see what happens." That didn't bug me at all, I enjoyed it.

What was most eye-opening for you about this specific transsexual culture?
By looking at this secluded world in the Philippines, we can see the marks of globalization. In some very remote, poor neighborhoods, we have the Paris Hilton fashion ideal, and that also told me how much we have enslaved the world into beauty standards. The ladyboys, they identify 100 percent with being beautiful. They thrive on it. So at the age of 27 and 28, when they start to lose their beauty because they're genetically men, their life is basically over. They go into hiding, and suicide is pretty common. That was probably the [biggest] eye-opener, how much of our society is summed up in their short lives.