2073
Entry updated 14 October 2025. Tagged: Film.
Film (2024). Neon, Double Agent, Film4. Produced by George Chignell and Asif Kapadia. Directed by Kapadia. Written by Kapadia and Tony Grisoni, loosely inspired by La Jetée (1962) directed by Chris Marker. Cast includes Samantha Morton. 85 minutes. Colour.
In a devastated Post-Holocaust future, some years after The Event (which turns out to have been an accumulation of linked events rather than one specific catastrophe), Ghost (Morton) lives in an abandoned building along with others hiding from an oppressive police state. All know they could be caught and arrested, to an unknown fate, at any time, simply for living outside the system. Ghost has not spoken for years, since the disappearance of her activist grandmother, but writes an account of her world, which we hear as a voice over. She forages among the ruins of civilizations, sharing her finds with others, and reads books she salvages, being particularly inspired by the autobiography of Malcolm X. Her studies of the past lead to the documentary sections which make up a large portion of the film, showing how the world got to the state it has reached in 2073. In the end, Ghost is arrested and strapped to a chair, where a Computer tries to get her to confess to any crimes she may have committed.
Much of 2073 consists of documentary footage of police brutality, government repression, climate devastation (see Climate Change), and particularly the links between right wing regimes and tech companies. Investigative journalists and activists attest to the various ways Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and politicians are creating the world which will inevitably (in the view of the film makers) lead to the wasteland of 2073, by working solely for the richest and most powerful 1%, and using Technology to crack down on any dissidence. All this is blunt and undeniably powerful, though the film's certainty about the direction the world is heading risks preaching to the converted. One of the journalists interviewed says her job is to act as witness to atrocities and abuses of power. Ghost's testimony, and by extension the film itself, work the same way, with barely a glimmer of hope allowed to surface. [CWa]
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