Alt-Right Meme Culture Documentary You Cant Kill Meme Swooped on by Utopia (EXCLUSIVE) – Variety

Brooklyn-based Utopia has picked up worldwide sales rights to Hayley Garrigus You Cant Kill Meme, a documentary feature which drills down on the political meme warfare enshrined by Donald Trumps presidential victory in 2016.

The acquisition comes just ahead of the films world premiere at Montreals Fantasia Film Festival this month. An on demand release in North America is planned for this fall, Utopia announced Monday.

You Cant Kill Meme explores the rise of political meme instrumentation, anticipated by a 2004 visionary non-fiction book by R. Kirk Packwood called Memetic Magic: Manipulation of the Root Social Matrix and the Fabric of Reality.

The film sees Garrigus interview Packwood and other figures in the meme magic world to trace the emergence of figures such as Pepe the Frog, originally a comic book slacker, and Kek, an Egyptian deity of darkness before dawn, in order to understand their centrality for alt-right advocacy. You Cant Kill Meme argues that these memes delivers an inside joke, triggers an emotional reaction and creates a sense of belonging.

What was learned in 2016 has now become standard practice, director-cinematographer Garrigus says in voiceover.

Alternating interviews with personal details about Garrigus research, the doc also studies a moment of meme magic when alt-right assertions about Hilary Clintons health condition transformed into a dominant political narrative. The assertion helped move the dial on voters intentions and meme Trump into power, according to the doc.

Packwood explains the emotional origins of meme culture in a sense of social inadequacy. You want to introduce some form of chaos to break down social hierarchy, he argues. Other interviewers are Billy el Brujo, a white-paint faced internet meme magic worker, and Las Vegas lightworker Carole Michaella.

Through conspiracy and confrontation, You Cant Kill Meme offers nuance in our cultural assumptions about meme culture, said Danielle DiGiacomo, head of content at Utopia. Utopia is ecstatic to transfix viewers with the films unraveling of modern-day internet communication, whose real-world implications are often oversimplified.

You Cant Kill Meme is produced by Samuel Gursky, Kerry Mack and Michael Beuttler, and edited by Beuttler and Garrigus, who spent three years working on the film. Its original music is composed by Tom Moore and Michael Beuttler.

Co-founded byRobert Schwartzman, Utopia is a sales and distribution company known for feature films includingEmma SeligmansToronto 2020 standout Shiva Baby, and Annabelle Attanasios 2019 SXSW hit Mickey and the Bear.

Upcoming Utopia releases include Sundance and New Directors/New Films 2021 selections El Planeta and Were All Going To The Worlds Fair; Dasha Nekrasovas Berlinale premiere The Scary of Sixty-First, in partnership with Shudder; and the Dash Snow documentary Moments Like This Never Last from Cheryl Dunn and Vice Studios.

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Alt-Right Meme Culture Documentary You Cant Kill Meme Swooped on by Utopia (EXCLUSIVE) - Variety