Directed by Pacho Velez
Running time 1 hour 21 minutes
Currently showing at the Sundance Film Festival

by Jaime Davis, Staff Writer, The Fixer

While watching online dating documentary Searchers, I was immediately reminded of the lyrics to this song I love by Childbirth called “Siri, Open Tinder.”

Single dad
(Swipe left)
Seahawks
(Swipe left)
Married couple
(Swipe right)
Group shot
(Which one are you?)
Siri…
Open Tinder
Siri…
Open Tinder

The song (and the whole album) are pretty great and you should check it out when you can. But back to Searchers…Pacho Velez, nonfiction filmmaker (The American Sector, Manakamana) and New School film professor, inserts his life directly into his latest, currently showing at Sundance. Searchers profiles regular New Yorkers of all ages as they navigate the often wired and tired world of online dating. Velez is also one of the film’s “subjects”, following him as he struggles to come up with compelling answers to OkCupid questions and swipes through profiles with the help of his mom.

Oooh, Pacho, I’ve been there. Before I started dating my partner who I met through Moviejawn (should we start MJ Personals?), I did the online thing and tried Tinder, OkCupid, Hinge, and Match to no avail. As a woman looking for other self-identifying women in a city of less than two million people, it was a bit soul crushing. I went on dates with people who were rude to waiters or wore sweatpants on our first date. I swiped through more photos of ladies in various unknown yoga poses than I’d ever like to see for the rest of my life.

For anyone who’s out there or has been, you know how exhausting it is trying to be witty in profiles and in messages, the thick skin required to weather regular rejection, the disappointment when finally meeting someone in person but not feeling anything romantic, how much it hurts when ghosted by someone you kinda liked (or didn’t like that much at all). For me, I thought of online dating as another full-time job with the most intense burnout rate ever–I often stopped and started, taking a couple months to shake it off before diving right back in again. Online dating ended up not working out for me (thankfully) but I know so many people who’ve met amazing partners and started truly lovely relationships (or even friendships) as a result. We can’t deny that in this day and age, if you’re super motivated to forge any kind of connection–romantic, sexual, friendly, or something in between–you need to interact with some apps to help make it happen.

And that’s what Searchers primarily takes a close look at: the interactions between users and their dating apps. Through a unique method of superimposing someone’s phone or computer screen glow onto the frame, the viewer can follow along as if they’re actually swiping through profiles, actively chatting, messaging someone for the first time, or answering pesky profile questions. The film follows a number of online daters from their early 20’s all the way up to Helene, a spry badass at 88 who’s tired of messaging men, including a 52 year-old she has her eye on, and not getting responses. The apps of choice for our subjects range from the more traditional, big names (Match, OkCupid, Tinder, Hinge, Grindr, Bumble) to some that are perhaps not necessarily household names, depending on the household (Adam4Adam, Lex, Seeking Arrangement).

The film attempts inclusivity by featuring New Yorkers representing a variety of backgrounds, including socioeconomic, racial, and sexual orientations, all looking for different things (sex, monogamy, open relationships, companionship, or sugaring). Interspersed with their online activity, Velez ushers his subjects (including himself) through different thematic questions–what are you looking for? Why is it so hard to meet people out there? What was the best date you had with someone you met online? Throughout all of this, Searchers is a fascinating, intoxicating hybrid of participatory, observational, reflexive, and performative modes of documentary filmmaking.

Partially shot in 2020 during the pandemic, the film’s major beats are marked by beautiful transitional montages of every day New Yorkers hanging out, taking selfies, canoodling, and documenting their relationships set to upbeat jazz and Latin numbers. While watching, I found myself uncontrollably smiling a whole lot – while I can relate to what most of the subjects are going through, you don’t have to have any online dating history to connect with the film. Herein lies the extra beauty of Searchers – at its core, it’s about connection, something most humans have sought out at some point in their lives. I have no doubt this film will make many others smile, too.

In the middle of the film, Jon, 55, gloom scrolling his way through an app, pronounces sadly, “I’m never gonna find anybody.” And maybe he won’t, at least not online. But at the end, our wily 88 year-old friend Helene proudly announces she has a date. There is someone, or a number of someones, for everyone, after all. As long as we don’t forget that we’ll be okay.