Screened at the most recent edition of the London BFI Festival following its presentation out of competition at the Venice Film Festival, 2073 [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
fiche film] by Asif Kapadia starts out along the lines of a dystopic movie set in the titular year of 2073, in an obscure future where humanity finds itself living in an ongoing state of emergency. The protagonist, played by Samantha Morton, is operating in a world dominated by technology which makes daily survival practically impossible.

From this premise, which Kapadia illustrates through confused editing, alternating footage shot ad hoc with footage from modern-day news stories, the film turns into a pamphlet which rails against the current world order, covering various modern catastrophes, all interlinked by some kind of diabolical design to keep men in a permanent state of slavery. Set in the future, a series of flashbacks help us to understand how the world came to this point of no return, unfolding arbitrarily (and optimistically?) fifty years hence. This allows Kapadia to attempt to analyse the present from an historic viewpoint, bringing into play several journalist who are also champions of the liberal press, such as Maria Ressa who was arrested in the Philippines by Rodrigo Duterte, Brit Carole Cadwalladr who covered Brexit for The Guardian, and India’s Rana Ayyub who covered the Gujarat Files scandal and who writes for Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post.

According to the director’s theory, the latter, together with Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, is one of the people responsible for the chaos into which the world has been sinking for the past thirty years. And this global elite, aided by dictators ruling over half of the world, are allegedly preparing an “event” (a pandemic, a nuclear war, a climatic catastrophe) which will act as a catalyst to impose the new world order. It’s a theory which would make people smile in a sci-fi film plot, let alone in a work with film-essay ambitions, as seems to be the case for 2073.

Ironically, 2073 shows all the aesthetic canons and paranoiac troubles of any random documentary based on conspiracy ideologies peddled by the very far right that Asif Kapadia seeks to demolish: the constant references to imminent catastrophe, the apocalyptic vision of technology mirrored by the integrated idea which techno bros Musk & Co. have of it, the world as a place where you can’t trust anyone… These elements are all common to the libertarian and populist ideas which Kapadia berates.

What prevails in the flashbacks which take us back from 2073 to the modern-day is sensationalism, as if the only sources capable of reporting back on the present world were CNN or Fox News. They’re all thrown into the same pot: China, Donald Trump, Narendra Modi and Putin, the advance of technology and artificial intelligence, each of them guilty of each and every foul authoritarian deed. Then there’s the repression of the Uyghurs, the 2002 anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat, the drugs war massacre in the Philippines… All seen strictly through western eyes without the slightest hint of historical analysis, in an anxiety-inducting, hodgepodge collage which accuses the audience of inaction and incites them to act. How, though, we don’t know.

2073 was produced by Lafcadia Productions (UK) while Neon Rated (USA) are managing international sales.