Laughing at Utopia Film Series
A film series, curated by the TORCH Humour Network in collaboration with Ultimate Picture Palace, exploring the playful and provocative relationship between utopia and satire.
Films in the series include Luis Buñuel’s surrealist black comedy The Exterminating Angel, Jacques Tati’s Playtime, a dazzling modernist comedy of life in the machine age, Yorgos Lanthimos’s Dogtooth, a chilling dismantling of the utopian ideal, and Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident, a darkly incisive work of political and social satire. Together, these films turn the promise of an ordered world on its head, revealing the absurdity, unease and unruly humanity lurking beneath.
Each film will be introduced by an Oxford University speaker, exploring its particular take on utopian dreams, social order and their comic undoing. From class and communism to family, modernity and authoritarianism, these films invite us to laugh at the worlds we build and question the worlds we imagine.
