John Waters meets Martin Scorsese in The Devil Queen (A Rainha Diaba), the transgressive cult film loosely inspired by the legendary 1930s gangster João Francisco dos Santos.
Kino Lorber is unleashing a gorgeous new 4K restoration next month, and we’re exclusively unveiling the trailer.
The new 4K restoration of The Devil Queen blends crime, camp, and social realism and will be released in NYC theaters on June 12 and LA on June 17 before expanding on June 19, 2026.
The film has been difficult to access outside of Brazil. Kleber Mendonça Filho, who contributed to the new restoration, praises The Devil Queen as a “bloody, nasty and full of personality“, a “Brazilian Gem” not to be missed.
In The Devil Queen, “Rio de Janeiro’s criminal underworld is run by an unexpected boss: Diaba, a femme queen with a taste for power and violence. When the police come after her boy toy, Diaba attempts to find a scapegoat to take the blame, and a plot to dethrone Her Majesty arises! Always clad in gloriously colourful outfits and accessories inspired by Afro-Brazilian culture, Diaba runs a mob of eccentric misfits made up of drag queens, pimps, prostitutes, and queer folks of all stripes.“
Directed by Antônio Carlos de Fontoura during Brazil’s military dictatorship, the film reimagines gangster dos Santos as an early ’70s representation of queerness.
Milton Gonçalves stars as the eponymous Devil Queen, Diaba.
“The plot I developed with the playwright Plinio Marcos leads the film to its bloody end, but the film, like all the films I love, goes far beyond the story it is telling. What fascinated me as a director was the possibility to invent a different reality, distant of all polite limits, in camera movements, in strident sound, in art collages, in set decoration, in costumes, in piercing music, in the red of the blood, in the gold of the sequins,” de Fontoura said in his director’s statement.
The Devil Queen was restored by CinemaScópio and Cinelimite.
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