Utopia

Decentering/City: An apartment in inhospitable West Berlin converted into a claustrophobic brothel: at the very margins of society, five women of different ages work as prostitutes for a sadistic pimp (Manfred Zapatka). He keeps them under surveillance, plays them off against each other and repeatedly punishes them in cruel fashion. With unflinching concentration and no fear of the drastic, Saless describes the structures of power and violence, dissects relationships of exploitation and dependence that necessarily strive to explode. “UTOPIA can very much be described as a horror film. What’s important though is that the horror has less to do with what Saless shows than how he shows it. It is a terror based on form. What makes the film impressive are the structures of repetition with respect to the rituals of brothel life, as well as the distanced, cold-blooded camerawork.”  (Lukas Foerster)