SURROUNDED BY SUNSETS (work in progress)
experimental documentary film
in collaboration with Nuno Cassola
Surrounded by sunsets (working title) is an ongoing docufiction film project tracing the impact of the violent loss of Zak Kostopoulos/Zackie Oh on the Athenian queer community, experiences of grieving, and the ways she/he has been collectively mourned. While paying homage to him/her through the eyes of others, it drafts a collective portrait of a community in grief and honours its breathtaking effort to fight for and cherish her/his memory, keeping them alive and present. Diving in and out of private and public spaces, moving between intimate encounters and conversations, protest marches, drag shows, performances and community gatherings, we follow a nascent social movement and hope to gently touch and preserve the glimpses of queer mourning’s capacity to transform social violence, exceed traumatic loss, forge its own mythologies and, if even briefly, create possibilities of collective grieving, healing and social change – when resistance to mourn and refusal to let go become mourning as resistance, poetic justice and an act of love.