Synopsis
"Featuring artist Zahra Mansoor and shot entirely in her studio in Aubervilliers near Paris, France, Doomed Love Trope blurs the boundary between performance art and narrative cinema. The painter obsessively depicts women reclining on a sofa in her studio. At first, it appears she is consumed by a forbidden love—one of the many women she's immortalized on canvas. But as the story unfolds, it is revealed that the true object of her affection is the sofa itself. In a futile attempt to consummate this surreal romance, she tries to marry the sofa. Rejected by both society and the inanimate object of her desire, she spirals into heartbreak and ultimately dies, consumed by longing. Blending kitsch humor with vintage erotica, silent film aesthetics, and lip-synced fragments recalling classic bollywood, this film reimagines the tragic love story through a queer, feminist, and Sufi lens. The sofa becomes a metaphor for fana’a—the mystical annihilation of the self in love—while also subverting romantic tropes and reclaiming queer female desire."