German avant-garde superstar and Werner Schroeter muse Magdalena Montezuma plays the gender-fluid Orlando-Orlanda with Delphine Seyrig (Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles) as their subsequent femme foils in this outlandish, radical riff on Virginia Woolf’s classic novel by queer icon, filmmaker, and artist Ulrike Ottinger. A grand pageantry freak show that nods to Tod Browning — the film literally includes a “Freak City” sign in neon lights and which Ottinger calls “a small theatre of the world,” Freak Orlando is a rigorously idiosyncratic and fragmentary retelling of the history of humankind — a world filled with myths, codes, gnomic secrets, cruelty, and celebration. Seyrig is fearless in her multiple roles, as a topless tree of life with a Botticelli smile; an empathetic, daydreaming department store announcer with electrified Bride of Frankenstein hair; a mother of twins; a conjoined twin sister (to Jackie Raynal, filmmaker and longtime Rohmer editor), a scantily clad dancer named “Bunny Helena,” and more. In the last decade of her life, Seyrig appeared in three of Ottinger’s films after having approached the New German filmmaker at a festival and congratulated her on her courage and originality. In response, Ottinger gave her some of her most outré yet heartfelt roles. - TIFF