“Sex work. The phrase evokes so much emotion, yet we understand it so poorly,” rising director Yago Hunt-Laudi wrote on an Instagram post celebrating the premiere of his new film, The Chrysalis. In this documentary profile, he paints an intimate portrait of stripper Haley Rolland, a young woman from Missouri who speaks about taking control of her body and the difficulties she encountered during the pandemic.

Rolland broke with traditional ideas of how women should behave—quiet, modest, and delicate – and decided to redefine what femininity means to her. She found empowerment in the strip clubs, and when asked how she felt about dancing naked in front of strangers she replied, “I’d never been so vulnerable before. I loved it.”

Strip clubs were just one of the many businesses impacted by the pandemic, meaning Rolland had to take her work online, far from the intimacy and human connection she was used to.

Hunt-Laudi’s film is a visual manifesto that aims to destigmatize sex work and other jobs in the adult entertainment industry. He uses a black-and-white aesthetic combined with analog shots and intimate social media footage, in which he adds his artistic signature: charcoal, pastel, tape, animation, and paper printouts.

With a light-hearted tone, this short film gives an authentic and feminist point of view of strippers, far from the clichés and stereotypes Rolland grew up with. “This fantasy that we provide helps people escape from their worries," she says, "from feeling trapped.”

Text by Clotilde Nogues