What better medium for communing with the spirits than film? Sights and sounds of eras since passed, or visions of things unknowable in reality — a memory machine and a dream machine in one. Fil Ieropoulos’ dense and experimental Uchronia, ostensibly both an imagined portrait of poet Arthur Rimbaud and a wild, free interpretation of his famous prose poem “A Season in Hell,” is both a memory of queer history and an anarchic dream of the collision of various eras and figures from within it. Ieropoulos depicts Rimbaud as a hermit, poring over histories he’d never come to know, boldly repurposed as a radical manifesto for queer identity in the modern age.
In Uchronia, the spirits of the past are not dead. The unreality of fictional storytelling is mitigated by the reality of its telling — that which is denied by conventional wisdom is permitted through an unconventional approach, a familiar experience for so many queer people. Death is rendered impermanent by recreation; film allows Arthur Rimbaud to commune with Marsha P. Johnson, David Wojnarowicz, Jack Smith, and others, and us to participate in the process. It’s a vibrant, sometimes bewildering process, and a work whose sheer volume of ideas and the conviction of their expression deserves sincere study, even if the quality of its execution varies considerably from moment to moment.
Most compelling is the first section, in which various figures provide various lectures in various languages to an audience (and, of course, to us, the audience). A few stilted line readings aside, the clarity of the political arguments made here, largely touching on colonialism and fascism in Europe since the mid-20th century, is extremely persuasive. The chaotic nature of its presentation, with rapid editing between speakers, interpretive performances, an atonal Greek chorus, and a barrage of assaultive sounds and images, means both that it requires excess concentration and that it maintains it; later, the film’s rhythms will slow somewhat, though the style — a collage of cacophony — will remain consistent.
Ieropoulos’ methods may be experimental, but they’re not entirely original, though they’re deployed with both force and sincerity. This is a blunt, uncompromising manifesto, but not a shallow one, and the style has thematic purpose, functioning as a reaction against the ideals of beauty that the film argues as fascist. Also falling under its fascist umbrella are modern technology, or at least its current figureheads, and sport — and it makes a pretty strong case for all of the above. Indeed, little escapes writer Foivos Dousos’ scorn, from pop art to AI, J. K. Rowling to Emilia Pérez. The general, and very deliberate, disregard for decency is, frankly, inspiring — a queer-punk cri de cœur for liberation from heteronormative, conservative constraints of respect and routine.
This can also make for an exhausting experience. The refusal to clearly identify specific figures, or to explain the meaning behind certain stylistic flourishes (of which there are many), may be an admirable refusal to coddle the viewer, though if the intent was to leave all open to interpretation in Uchronia, not all interpretations might be forgiving. A scene featuring a mud orgy accompanied by newsreel narration of war tragedies conveys little, any implied meaning lost in the awkward juxtaposition. A quasi-romantic scene is set to music by Wagner, of all people, shortly after a lengthy discussion on fascism, and again the juxtaposition raises more questions than answers. But, in the closing section, in which the film’s participants are interviewed on camera, only answers are provided. What one takes from Uchronia is, perhaps, purely what one takes from Uchronia.
As the film becomes quieter and more contemplative, though no less creative, its vitality starts to dwindle, yet it’s never long before something recaptures the viewer’s attention — the Andy Warhol sequence, followed by a drag musical performance, is a particular highlight. There’s simply so much to enjoy, endure, and unpack in Uchronia, that it’s only natural that some of it is more successful than the rest, and vice versa. Ieropoulos has run riot with this memory/dream machine. If the result is patchy in its effectiveness, it’s still a thrill to see a filmmaker display this much daring.
Published as part of Prismatic Ground 2026.
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