Screen Ireland-supported documentary The Pervert's Guide to Utopias selected for the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival
Posted: 10th August 2026
Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland is delighted to congratulate director Sophie Fiennes and the creative team behind The Pervert’s Guide to Utopias on its selection for this year's Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). The film will receive its North American premiere at the festival, after debuting at the Venice International Film Festival earlier in September.
The Pervert’s Guide to Utopias joins Kim Bartley’s Lemonade, Frank Berry’s The Lost Children of Tuam, Louise Bagnall’s Julián and David Turpin’s Ancestors on the TIFF line-up for 2026, bringing the number of Screen Ireland-supported projects in the programme this year to five.
Directed by Sophie Fiennes (Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami), The Pervert's Guide to Utopias is an Ireland-UK-Slovenia-Netherlands-Norway co-production. Philosopher Slavoj Žižek is our guide through landscapes of classic film, music, social media, archive and webcasts. Making unexpected twists and turns, he maps the utopian illusions of our times. Through absurd juxtapositions and startling insights, we are seduced into recognising our fate, in order to change it. “If aliens were to visit our earth and by chance ask me, ‘Could you explain to us what humanity is about?’” says Žižek, “I would not tell them, ‘go around and look,’ I would tell them, ‘look at these and these and these movies, and you will understand us.’” The Pervert’s Guide to Utopias concludes a two-decade collaboration between Sophie Fiennes and Slavoj Žižek, and completes a trilogy that began with The Pervert's Guide to Cinema (2006) and The Pervert's Guide to Ideology (2012).
The Pervert's Guide to Utopias was produced by Katie Holly and Evan Horan for Keeper Pictures; Shani Hinton; Martin Rosenbaum; Sophie Fiennes; Jožko Rutar; Ineke Kanters; Lisette Kelder; and Andrew Grant. Production companies are Keeper Pictures, P Guide, SPOK Films, The Film Kitchen and Mattima Films. The film was supported by Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland, Netherlands Film Fund, Slovenian Film Centre, Viba Film, Field of Vision, Netherlands Film Production Incentive, Creative Europe MEDIA, Arktisk Film Norge, VPRO, Radio Televizija Slovenija and Fritt Ord.
Screen Ireland will have a presence for Irish film at the inaugural TIFF: The Market, promoting the Irish creative screen industries and Irish films selling and screening at the Festival and Market this year.
The 51st edition of the Toronto International Film Festival will take place from September 10th to September 20th, 2026.