Aurelio Medina & Daniel García
Spain | 2012 | 39 min
World premiere
Languages : English, Spanish
Subtitle : English
In 1848, under the leadership of socialist theoretician and utopian Etienne Cabet, an egalitarian community, the ideal city of Icaria, was founded in Texas. This mysterious “road movie” sets out to investigate an adventure… of which no trace remains. The film passes no judgement in comparing the utopian colony dreamed of by the Icarians with our contemporary society.
In 1848, a young Catalan left Barcelona in response to a call from Etienne Cabet, French theoretician of the ideal city of Icaria, to take part in founding an egalitarian community in Texas. 150 years later, two Spanish filmmakers set out to research the “Icarian utopia” in the Unites States… which has disappeared without trace. This unusual road movie has nothing of the exotic or picturesque; it is no picture postcard. Rather, intriguing and mysterious, it invites us to engage in time travel: a journey of the mind, in which the spectator is asked to fill in the blanks, speculate and be carried along. Part myth, part reality, the film builds its own road, reinventing itself at each stage of the way. In a subtle interplay of echoes, places, encounters, past and present enter into dialogue. Compared with the American dream of today’s immigrants, in quest of work and money, the society the Icarians dreamed of seems a distant mirage. And the site of their utopian colony has been taken over by a model prison…
Alessia Bottani
Translation BMP Translations