Asif Kapadia's 2073 received little attention when it came out near the end of 2024. It’s not exactly holiday fare: this vision of a bleak dystopian future wracked by environmental cataclysms and brutal authoritarian regimes is even more disturbing due to the chilling fact that much of the footage is not filmed on a soundstage or against a green screen, but is real and taken from contemporary events. But now that’s on Max and as harrowing as ever, 2073 may be the most essential new “sci-fi” film to watch.
Kapadia (Amy) uses actual, current-day documentary, news, and mobile footage as visions of the past experienced by the film's protagonist, a woman known only as Ghost (Samantha Morton of The Walking Dead and Minority Report — the latter of which is represented by a brief clip). By melding fiction and non-fiction to create a horrifying cinematic vision, Kapadia not only drives home how close we may be to such a devastating reality, but continues a cinematic tradition that stretches from 1965's The War Game to 2024's The Seed of the Sacred Fig.
