Tracing Utopia selected for the Tiger short film competition at Rotterdam IFF [22/12/2020]

Tracing Utopia, a short film directed by Catarina de Sousa and Nick Tyson, is selected for the international short film competition at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, where it will have its world premiere. The festival, which this year celebrates its 50th anniversary, takes place between the 1st and 7th of February 2021 in a reduced and hybrid format. Given the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, the competitive sessions will take place in person during the festival, which will have a second moment from the 2nd to the 6th of June dedicated to the celebrations of this important anniversary.

Tracing Utopia is the result of a collaboration between the filmmakers who did a residency at UnionDocs in New York. Despite the constraints imposed by the new reality, the filmmakers persisted in the initial idea of ​​giving voice to this group of young people and explored the possibility of creating a community in the digital space. This work, which portrays the aspirations of a queer youth community in Queens, is an odyssey that transcends time, through dreams and visions of a better world. The film starts from a utopia and creates a collaborative manifesto, demanding the changes that queer youth want today.

Tracing Utopia is an odyssey into the dreams of a group of queer teens in New York City as they envision a better world. Directed by Catarina de Sousa and Nick Tyson, this short documentary imagines a form of queer community transcending time, through glimpses of a utopia made manifest in the streets, in community spaces, and online. A collaborative manifesto weaves these pasts and futures together--calling for the change that queer youth strive for today: “As queer teens in Queens, we demand this in order to build a better world.”