Dating While Distancing: Pacho Velez’s Sundance-premiering Searchers

“New York is a dysfunctional relationship itself,” a woman laments in Pacho Velez’s Searchers, a cinematic sociological study of online dating via the POV of a wide range of New Yorkers during the 2020 Covid-19 summer. (The doc by the co-director, with Sierra Pettengill, of 2017’s The Reagan Show – which I raved about on this site – premiered in the NEXT section at this winter’s likewise digital Sundance Film Festival.) She goes on to note that the one positive thing about lockdown is the chance to enjoy the apartment that you spent nearly all your income on but rarely use. (Which reminded this expat New Yorker that though I will forever heart NYC, it’s also a high-maintenance relationship. A realization that led me to the conclusion several years back that it’d likely just be healthier if we were to amicably live apart.)

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