Sci-Fi
From planet Pluke in the Kin-Dza-Dza galaxy to H.R. Giger’s biomechanical aliens to the feral-femme planet called After Blue, this collection feeds our wild escapist fantasies while reminding us that other possible worlds can be just as brutal and unwieldy as our own. And while some stories take us far, far away on trippy psychedelic journeys (Delta Space Mission), another story involves aliens materialized from a writer's imagination who come to visit Earth (Visitors from the Arkana Galaxy), and another is a spy-comedy set spiraling in motion at the discovery of nuclear doomsday in a suitcase (They Stole the Bomb). For gravity, we have a doc with a more sincere focus here too, Bluespace, which examines how far-fetched terraforming and interplanetary colonization would be.
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Visitors From the Arkana Galaxy
Directed by Dusan Vukotic • Documentary • With Lucie Zulová, Ksenia Prohaska, Zarko Potocnjak • 1981 • 89 minutes
A truly gonzo 1980s Croatian sci-fi / fantasy / comedy about a struggling writer, Robert (Zarko Potocnjak), who dreams up a story of gold-skinned alien androids named Andra, Targo an...
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The Universal Theory
Directed by Timm Kröger • Drama • With Jan Bülow, Olivia Ross • 2024 • 118 minutes
Set in 1962 at a quantum mechanics conference in an isolated lodge nestled amid the towering landscapes of the Swiss Alps, THE UNIVERSAL THEORY is the story of a gifted young physicist, his curmudgeonly mentor, an...
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Gwen and the Book Of Sand
Movie
A teenage girl and her 173-year-old companion take an epic journey in French director Jean-François Laguionie's hauntingly poetic animated classic. A sublime masterpiece of world animation, GWEN is on par with René Laloux's FANTASTIC PLANET and Miyazaki's NAUSICAÄ OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND as a v...
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Dark Star: H. R. Giger's World
Directed by Belinda Sallin • Documentary • 2014 • 95 minutes
Surrealist artist H. R. Giger (1940–2014) terrified audiences with his Oscar-winning monsters in Ridley Scott's ALIEN. Sci-fi, horror, music, album covers, tattoos and fetish art have been influenced by his dark, intricate paintings an...
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Cat City
Directed by Béla Ternovszky • Animation • 1986 • 97 minutes
Unflappable and unstoppable mouse secret agent Nick Grabovsky (László Sinkó) with his deadpan voice, baggy pants and a big "G" on his shirt, goes up against the criminal cat gang run by the sinister, metal-pawed Mr. Teufel (Miklós Bened...
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MovieFor the Plasma
Movie
For the Plasma begins in a remote house on the coast of Maine, where a young woman named Helen has found work as a forest-fire lookout responsible for monitoring the nearby woodland. While analyzing CCTV footage of the surrounding forest, she discovers she can reconfigure her perception to predic...
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Zerograd
Directed by Karen Shakhnazarov • Drama • With Vladimir Menshov, Leonid Filatov • 1988 • 102 minutes
Part Kafka, part Agatha Christie and part Monty Python, Russian director Karen Shakhnazarov's surreal satire of Communism follows an Everyman engineer named Varakin (Leonid Filatov) who arrives in...
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Kin-dza-dza!
Directed by Georgiy Daneliya • Drama • With Stanislav Lyubshin, Levan Gabriadze • 1986 • 133 minutes
Imagine Andrei Tarkovsky circa Solaris directing Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and you'll come close to the existential weirdness of this loopy Soviet-era sci-fi comedy. Two...
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After Blue (Dirty Paradise)
Directed by Bertrand Mandico • Drama • With Elina Löwensohn, Paula Luna • 2021 • 129 minutes
In a faraway future, on a wild and untamed female inhabited planet called After Blue, a lonely teenager named Roxy (Paula Luna) unknowingly releases a mystical, dangerous, and sensual assassin from her p...
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Level Five (Chris Marker)
Directed by Chris Marker • Drama • With Catherine Belkhodja, Kenji Tokitsu • 1996 • 106 minutes
A woman (Laura), a computer, an invisible interlocutor: such is the setup on which LEVEL FIVE is built. She "inherits" a task: to finish writing a video game centered on the Battle of Okinawa—a traged...
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Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat In Space
Directed by t.o.L • Animation • With Takeshi Katô, Hisayo Mochizuki • 2002 • 92 minutes
Arguably the only Japanese anime ever made inspired by both Hello Kitty and Thomas Pynchon, TAMALA 2010 is a futuristic techno fever dream that follows the adorable wide-eyed kitty Tamala on her home world of...
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Time Of Roses
Directed by Risto Jarva • Drama • With Arto Tuominen, Ritva Vepsä • 1969 • 105 minutes
Finnish director Risto Jarva's futuristic, Pop Art-influenced sci-fi mystery follows a historian of late 20th century culture who becomes fascinated with the enigmatic death of a free-spirited erotic model dec...
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The Bride From Hades
Directed by Satsuo Yamamoto • Drama • With Kojiro Hongo, Mayumi Ogawa, Miyoko Akaza • 1968 • 89 minutes
Noble samurai Shinzaburo (Kojiro Hongo, Gamera) is visited one night by the beautiful courtesan Otsuyu (Miyoko Akaza, Lady Snowblood). She pleads with him to marry her and save her from life i...
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Battle of Memories
Directed by Leste Chen • Drama • With Bo Huang, Jinglei Xu, Yihong Duan, Zishan Yang • 2017 • 120 minutes
When a famous writer (Huang Bo) decides to have his memories wiped to forget a divorce, he regrets it. Attempting to recover the memories, he becomes haunted by psychopathic thoughts, acting...
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They Stole The Bomb
Directed by Ion Popescu-Gopo • Drama • With lurie Darie • 1961 • 69 minutes
A dialogue free Romanian science-fiction spy-comedy that draws upon farce, satire and surrealism as it subversively deconstructs the spy thriller with the protagonist's accidental discovery of a nuclear suitcase bomb and...
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The Last Angel of History (John Akomfrah)
Directed by John Akomfrah • Documentary • 1996 • 45 minutes
John Akomfrah, director of Seven Songs of Malcolm X, returns with an engaging and searing examination of the hitherto unexplored relationships between Pan-African culture, science fiction, intergalactic travel, and rapidly progressing c...
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Bluespace
Directed by Ian Cheney • Documentary • 2016 • 73 minutes
Could humans live on Mars? Would we want to? Emmy-nominated filmmaker Ian Cheney provides insight into our currently unsustainable relationship with our home planet by examining the sci-fi speculation of 'terraforming,' or making another p...
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Donna Haraway: Story Telling for Earthly Survival
Directed by Fabrizio Terranova • Documentary • With Donna Haraway • 2017 • 81 minutes
Feminist thinker and historian of science Donna Haraway is best known as the author of two revolutionary works: the essay "A Cyborg Manifesto" and the book Primate Visions. Both set out to upend well-establishe...
