Sci-fi docufiction ‘2073’ details our collapsing world

2073, which opens with a montage of apparent global collapse, soon follows a mute woman known as Ghost (Samantha Morton), who lives underground, and scavenges for broken electronics and other discarded materials she and her fellow subterranean dwellers can use. Meanwhile, up above, new luxury skyscrapers touch the clouds. Ghost's voiceover narration clues us in as to what this world is like, after an unspecified tipping point known as the "The Event" destabilized everything three decades prior. The film's environment, however, is portrayed not through newly shot footage, but through existing archival material involving police brutality, climate catastrophe, and the introduction of A.I. and drone technology into our society.

As Ghost traverses the caverns, as well as the outside world, Kapadia's pristine reaction shots of Morton are intercut with lo-fi footage of rampant poverty, death, and disease—once again, via existing cellphone footage shot in our recent past, in Ukraine, Gaza, and elsewhere. This is the film's conceptual version of time travel: the futuristic 2073 and our present exist side by side. Although Kapadia and editor Chris King seek to create a continuous narrative from all the things Ghost sees, the distinction between real and fictitious footage tells a story of its own, about the dystopian nature of the world in which we already live.

The film begins traveling through time in a much more overt way when Ghost begins explaining how her world came to be. These explanations take the form of various documentary montages—snippets of a world in motion, in the vein of globe-spanning non-narrative docs like Godfrey Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi, and Ron Fricke's Samsara. Kapadia's montages draw from the '90s, 2000s, and 2010s, and each time the movie flashes back to the past, a new section focuses on a single aspect of the world's rightward shift, and the rise of global fascism. The United States’ Donald Trump, China's Xi Jinping, India's Narendra Modi, and the Philippines' Rodrigo Duterte are key figures in the backstory, though numerous other global strongmen make appearances too, from Hungary's Viktor Orbán, to Saudi Arabia's Mohammad bin Salman.

Once this interconnected network is established, 2073 begins getting into granular detail, with chilling segments that detail mass surveillance, climate change, and the power afforded to tech oligarchs, all of which led collectively to the mysterious "Event," whose vague nature plays a part of the movie’s broad tapestry. Dissenting voices feature in these montages too, from Filipina journalist Maria Ressa—seen questioning Duterte on extra-legal executions—to Indian columnist Rana Ayyub, often targeted for her writing on India's treatment of its Muslim citizens (Kapadia is of Indian Muslim descent, so this topic ends up a major focus). Once each of these subjects builds within its own section, its cross-pollination with the rest of the world is hinted at as well, resulting in a "backstory" from a future vantage in which we, the people of today, are more connected than we realize.

Unfortunately, Kapadia also has a tendency to over-explain himself, so these aforementioned montages feature not just winks at the audience about the movie's concept, but detailed descriptions of its intent, to the point of flashing vague calls to action up on the screen. It's noble, but unnecessary, given the strength of the movie's images, and the power with which they're assembled. What's more, the film even briefly pulls footage from early 2000s sci-fi movies, like Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men—which detailed a dystopian Britain torn apart by its hatred of immigrants—and Steven Spielberg's Minority Report, which also starred Morton, and detailed the dangers of surveillance states. 2073 employs footage from these films much as it does real news reels, as though they were events that actually happened, and in effect, treats them as past warnings we refused to heed.

2073 may not shed light on hidden corners of its subject matter, but in presenting these various potential tipping points in quick succession, it becomes a depressing social media doom-scroll in cinematic form. Our present is the backstory to something much more horrifying, and if Kapadia hits us over the head with this idea, it's only because of the urgency with which it needs to be recognized.