Locarno review: Maids of Petroleum (2026)

Locarno Film Festival
Pardi di Domani
Natnal Competition

Traditions can be somewhat flexible, but firmness of sorts is required for them to be kept, even when the times are changing. That leads to certain discrepancies between the ideas those traditions promote and represent, and the reality of a bigger picture surrounding them. Sometimes, those gaps are funny, but usually there is an underlying sadness about it.

Hans Baumann made a short documentary Maids of Petroleum, about one such tradition that is being kept, partly out of the citizens’ beliefs, partly by inertia, and partly by endlessly parroting the same old phrases. It premiered at Locarno’s Pardi di domani section.

The tradition is the beauty pageant that happens every five years in an unnamed small town in Inner California. The title comes from the contestants, the young girls. The town was built on the foundation of oil, and the oil helped it through two world wars, a string of presidents and their administrations and several economic crises. However, the old glory got outdated due to oil reserves drying up, or because the state shifts its policies towards the green transition; in the end, it does not matter.

That is the point when tradition becomes a form, much like the town council meeting where the councillors pledge their allegiances to God and country. The thing is that the girls, the contestants, still believe in it, probably because they were taught to, and they prepare, practice, parade and compete for the title of the “Oildorado Queen”. The trouble is that their “title” and ticket into a better future might be completely false because it might not exist.

Imagine an observational documentary crossover between Little Miss Sunshine and There Will Be Blood. From the former, Baumann takes the point from one of Grandpa’s monologues later in the film, about life being a series of silly and potentially rigged beauty pageants. From the latter, though, the cinematographer Nellie Kluz emulates the style to give us the sense of what kind of place it is. Seamlessly welded together by editor Alex Tyson, Maids of Petroleum serves as a mirror of today, where the glorious past is long gone, and the future is uncertain.

https://mubi.com/en/films/maids-of-petroleum/trailer

---

Year: 2026
Runtime: 16’
Country: USA
Language: English
Directed by: Hans Baumann
Cinematography by: Nellie Kluz
Editing by: Alex Tyson
Sound by: Chris Howland, Emile Klein
Colourist: Ben Neufeld
Produced by: Hans Baumann, Matthew JX Doyle
Production companies: Studio HBLA, Falsework