Vassilis Kroustallis reviews the queer docu-essay 'Uchronia' by Fil Ieropoulos, premiered at the 2026 Berlin Film Festival.
'Uchronia' is a concept devised by the French author and philosopher Charles Renouvier for his 1876 novel Uchronie, meaning 'alternate history'. Three years before, the groundbreaking poem 'Une Saison en Enfer' (1873) by Arthur Rimbaud was written, detailing his death and descent into hell and its own visions. Director Fil Ieropoulos and Foivos Dousos, as scriptwriter, revisit the hell of failed social revolutions, showing it palpably and showily, using the device of a reawakened (Dracula-like) Rimbaud (Kristof) and his travels through history.
Their 'Uchronia' docu-essay (premiering at the 2026 Berlinale's Forum Expanded) is unapologetically queer, bourgeoisie-resistant, and a tool for investigating neofascism. The sprawling film's plot brings everyone, revolutionary and queer ally or martyr, into the fore; from Emma Goldman (Rea Walldén) to photographer David Wojnarowicz (The Boy) to French theorist Guy Hocquenguem (Christos Adrianopoulos) to Alan Turing (Marc Sutton) and many others. More is more in 'Uchronia'; the mode of a punkish sentiment, citing statements as if mantras that can now have their allotted use, and art directing the whole piece as a camaraderie of TV personalities on the various (and constantly neverending) screens in this subliminally playful (but still timid in its joie de vivre film).
'Uchronia' follows closely as a cinematic text Rimbaud's 'Une Saison en Enfer's sections; yet, as expected, it tends to invest old figures with new situations, like Meloni's attempted futuristic revival or Greece's 2023 pushback against immigrants, which resulted in the death of over 600 people on the coast of Southwestern Greece. Unlike the team's previous doc 'Avant-Drag!' 2024 effort, this is less about art (even though Andy Warhol still gets the blame for art commercialization) and more about queer culture as the leverage against which all resistance (especially failed resistance) can be measured. (Some drag queens participating in 'Avant-Drag!' also feature here).
The film functions in a closed-set environment (and a fictional conference of kindred spirits) and should be evaluated accordingly. Archival material is displayed on the screens in celluloid form, as if we were the footage editors deciding what to cut and what to pass (celluloid is a fetish object for various characters in 'Uchronia'). Figures lecture on a podium and are being watched, or indulge in cinematic acts at home in a film where what matters is equally divided between what the queer ghosts say and how the ghosts look and behave on camera. The latter is one of the film's greatest pleasures.
This is a film for the eyes (and mind), while queerness, as a tactile-empathetic quality, is relegated to a few scenes. The camp element is also thin here (except for a brilliant abducting Warwol sequence, in which a fictional Divine has a field day); when it occurs, along with the brilliantly placed songs, it lights up the whole endeavor.
The uninitiated would see 'Uchronia' as a parade of queer figures against conformism and the malaises of late capitalism; the erudites will look in vain for character complexity (the film has a completely different, archetypal aim throughout). Languages come and go (from English to French to Greek to Russian), as if everything is in constant flux and needs better placement to capture the perceived audience. In its 97 minutes, 'Uchronia' is a consistent rainpouring of poetic/political discourse elements, some better landed than others; it is intellectual fun and flirts effortlessly with the queer paranormal. Vincente Minnelli, in his own uchronia, would probably have liked it.
'Uchronia' premiered at the 76th Berlin Film Festival (Forum Expanded)
Vassilis Kroustallis
