The Pervert's Guide to Utopias

What can cinema’s visions of utopia tell us about the world we live in? Philosopher Slavoj Žižek and filmmaker Sophie Fiennes take a gleefully provocative tour through cinema’s dreams of paradise, rebellion and the end of the world.

Moving through films including The Handmaid's Tale, Apocalypse Now, Melancholia and Blade Runner 2049, Žižek finds utopian desires hiding in unexpected places, and dystopian nightmares lurking inside our visions of freedom. Fiennes gives his restless thought a suitably restless visual form, placing Žižek inside meticulously recreated cinematic worlds and colliding them with archival footage, popular culture and the fractured imagery of the present.

Funny, intellectually unruly and occasionally apocalyptic, The Pervert’s Guide to Utopias is less interested in offering a blueprint for paradise than in asking why we have become so fascinated by its opposite. And, in true Žižekian fashion, the film finds its unlikely glimmer of hope precisely in confronting the darkness.

This film is eligible for the Best New Irish Feature Award, proudly sponsored by the Irish Examiner.