15/06/2023 - Looming environmental calamities and the megadeath events that might ensue are the focus of this block of animated sci-fi short films

Polish animation scholar Olga Bobrowska built on the main thematic line of this year’s Animafest – Science Fiction in Animated Film – to compile a carefully thought-out, hour-long programme block exploring post-apocalypse and the end of the Anthropocene.

The characters in Backup (2023) by German director Gerrit Kuge are faced with a very particular cataclysm: solar decay. It is not an uncommon theme in the science fiction genre – take, for example, Sunshine (2007) or Solar Crisis (1990). But what is distinctive in Kuge’s film, painted predominantly in violets and blues, is the atmosphere of overpowering melancholia.

A feeling of sorrow, helplessness and passivity permeates every frame of Backup, in which the notion of saving humanity from extinction is secondary to a more self-centred project: postponing the inevitable for as long as possible. The two characters, one female and one male, are of very different financial statuses, which allows Kuge to explore the injustices stemming from the premium, front-seat apocalypse services provided for the rich, while the poor perish in the sun. This social note feels rather insincere, however, given the focus on the aesthetic of dying rather than on inherent societal problems. There is no positive action on display, only detached and empty waiting, as the aristocracy feel hollow compassion for the plebs while exploring the best and most glorious way to cease existing.

Human existence has already ceased, however, in Julie Engass' Without Us (2022) which explores earthly vistas devoid of homo sapiens. Crows feed on leftover food. House plants grow wild. Green covers the screen, and the planet as a whole seems pretty unfazed by the fact that one species is missing. The indifference of the natural world to the plight of us primates might seem horrifying, but didn't we help wipe many species from the face of the planet, without ever paying much attention to their particular extinction events? Did we weep for the dodos during their apocalypse?

While the catastrophes in Backup and Without Us are of non-human origin, those in 3.5% (2022) and Carface (2015) have a very clear cause: people. Lukas Bieri’s 3.5% is more of a political statement than a film, comprised of a few computer-generated 3D images with a programmatic assertion that engagement of 3.5% of the population in non-violent political action would be enough to effect significant change. Carface, on the other hand, with its quirky hand-drawn style, is markedly more playful, making fun of car culture and its possible demise. These films are precise in their isolation of the problem (it’s us), but they also offer hints for possible solutions, mostly involving not thinking about ourselves so much

Cockroach. Blatta Orientalis (1987) by Zdzisław Kudła and With Joy and Merriness (2014) by Jeanne Boukraa both follow up on the theme of human-induced disaster, with the addition of the striking motif of metamorphosis. In the first, the transformation into a cockroach is an adaptation technique required to survive in a nuclear wasteland. Grimly sketched monochromatic animation conveys dark humour at the end of the world, while the last remnant of humankind emerges from underground to join its new insect brethren. With Joy and Merriness also uses a hand-drawn technique, constructing a mutating farce, with humans turning into immortal, dehumanized blobs of medusa flesh.

As a block, Speculative Animation – Back to the Post-Apocalypse is, in essence, more concerned with pre-apocalypse: the causes, preventable or otherwise, of impending doom. These strong artistic visions of the future paint a bleak picture, mainly shaped by human (in)action. The diagnosis is clear, but the prognosis is dependent on the patient. Bobrowska’s diverse but precise selection manifests a voice of concern about the present, the future and the possibility of directing our human fate away from that which befell the dodos.