Chavela (2017) on Netflix

Plot summary

Chavela Vargas arrives in Mexico from Costa Rica as a teenager and wins fame singing rancheras and boleros, songs written mostly by men about unrequited love for women, weariness and loneliness. She delivers them in a rough, vulnerable voice and her own rhythm. Offstage she is a raucous storyteller who picks the tales she likes best and lives them into being, building the public figure of a rebellious, free-spirited outsider. The portrait draws on interview footage recorded in 1991 and on her performances, and sets the myths others told about her beside the ones she told about herself. Her identity as a lesbian stays out of her public story for most of her life.