Detropia

Detropia
Directed by
Produced by
  • Craig Atkinson
  • Heidi Ewing
  • Rachel Grady
Cinematography
  • Craig Atkinson
  • Tony Hardmon
Edited byEnat Sidi
Music by
  • DIAL.81
  • Blair French
Production
company
Loki Films
Distributed by
Release date
  • January 21, 2012 (2012-01-21) (Sundance Film Festival)
Running time
91 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Box office$356,000

Detropia is a 2012 American documentary film, directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, about the city of Detroit, Michigan.[1] It focuses on the decline of the economy of Detroit due to long-term changes in the automobile industry, and the effects that the decline has had on the city's residents and infrastructure.

The film's name came from a portmanteau of the words "Detroit" and "Utopia", and was inspired by an abandoned auto parts store, where the letter "A" in "AUTO" and the letters "R", "T", and "S" in "PARTS" were missing from the store's sign. The letter "I" had been painted into the appropriate part of the store front to make the sign read "UTO PIA".[2]

  1. ^ Ramsey, Claire Pfeiffer (September 14, 2012). "'Detropia' Producer Comes Home to Debut Documentary in Royal Oak". Farmington-Farmington Hills Patch. Archived from the original on January 31, 2013. Retrieved November 1, 2012.
  2. ^ "Q&A with Heidi Ewing". Q&A. C-SPAN. October 28, 2012. Retrieved April 11, 2017. ...we opened the film at Sundance in January and they needed a title because we had sent them a cut and with a temporary title and we couldn't figure out what to call it. And there's a shot in the film where an auto parts store has been converted by an artist to read instead of auto parts, it reads Utopia. And a guy is walking by it and we started playing with the concept that Detroit was a utopia for many. And we started combining the words.