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'2073' is a film some people really don't want you to see. You should watch it [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-06-25
There’s a dystopian-style film streaming now on HBO Max and some other venues that is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It’s called 2073, and it’s a unique, hybrid work, incorporating multiple film genres. The film portrays a vision of what life may be like in this country if current trends continue. As the film’s trailer notes: “This film is not fiction. It is not a documentary. It is a warning.”
Directed by Academy-award winning filmmaker Asif Kapadia, the film scores only a 48% on Rotten Tomatoes. But if you do a bit of research you come away with the sense that this rating may be a consequence of review-bombing by those who are offended by — or directly implicated in — what the film has to say about our current situation, and in particular those whose actions have led to it. What was most interesting to me is the fact that this film was made before the re-election of Donald Trump and his employment of Elon Musk and other tech oligarchs to disassemble and refashion certain facets of the U.S. government from within, and the proliferation of a militarized “secret police” force through ICE. In that respect it seems eerily prophetic.
The film’s trailer is here:
First off, those expecting a captivating, dystopian narrative with character development and plot resolution will be disappointed. Despite its caveat (as noted above), the film most resembles an actual documentary of current events incorporated within a sparse, even skeletal, sci-fi story that in actuality is little more than a backdrop for the film’s main premise, which is far more rooted in the present day. Note: There are some spoilers forthcoming.
In the film, an unidentified citizen played by Samantha Morton (whom some of you may remember as the “precog” Agatha from Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report), living in what remains of the United States as of the year 2073, is reduced to scavenging in abandoned malls and subways for old canned goods and makeshift shelter. We understand she has been singled out by what is obviously a corporate-dominated, fascist “American” regime simply by virtue of her anonymity, as her identity cannot be established through the prevailing surveillance and data gathering methods the regime uses to control the population. As a result of her existence “off the grid,” so to speak, she is being pursued for questioning, as a potential threat to the regime.
We are also informed that the conditions depicted in the film were accelerated in part from an apparent confluence of radical climate events and their destabilizing political ramifications occurring thirty-seven years prior (that would be 2036), an occurrence described in the film only as “The Event.”
But just as this plot line is established, the film changes character dramatically, shifting in a series of multiple sequences back to our present day — in fact, the past ten years up to and including late 2024, when the film was actually made -- and examining, with accompanying archived video footage, the coalescence of events that led to the dystopian hellscape that exists in the ensuing, fictional world of 2073.
These include, most notably, the rise of a dominant tech oligarchy utterly uninterested in democracy, or the ultimate social effects of its creations. Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are notably singled out, but the major premise the film tries to illustrate is the erosion of democratic values and democracy itself through the proliferation of disinformation and the conjuring of alternate realities that malignant political actors such as Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and other aspiring (or existing) autocrats have made of the so-called “tech” oligarchs’ inventions, to consolidate power what is now over 70% of the world’s population.
The film also factually demonstrates how these autocracies and dictatorships ally with the tech oligarchs and each other, in pursuit of that common goal of absolute control and power. Brexit is identified as one of these key events (there is some very revealing video of a meeting between Steve Bannon and Nigel Farage, for example). The means to that end is depicted as the suppression of journalists and control of the media through ever-expanding surveillance and militarized policing (one of the most jarring scenes at the outset of the film is the Thiel’s Palantir logo adorning a skyscraper). China’s attempt to assimilate Uighur culture by such means is portrayed as a template for such surveillance and data-based oppression.
The implication is that the world of 2073 is largely controlled by these ultra-rich, comfortable and distant tech oligarchs, with democracy completely eroded and the majority of the population reduced to serf status through constant surveillance and manipulation. Several (notably female) current journalists, historians and authors who have been witnesses to or victims of autocratic repression are included in the film, providing a testimonial backdrop of the unholy alliance between tech and autocracy that we understand results, by 2073, in a dystopian, divided society which effectively separates a small sliver of the ultra-rich from the vast masses of terminally poor.
As noted by reviewer Mansel Stimpson:
Those who dismiss this film partly do so on the grounds that there is nothing here that is not old news. But the fact is that the majority of us seek to limit our fears by isolating these various elements or by distancing them. Each war – Ukraine, Gaza etc. – is for most of us in a distant place and for all the common suffering of ordinary people we choose not to link the impact of wars, of climate change and of autocrats already installed or hoping to be. What 2073 does is to pull all these together in order to make us realise the need to see the connections and to appreciate the extent to which the current state of things requires us to recognise fully the menace for the future that already exists.
I will be the first to acknowledge that this film is not perfect. Some of the video sequences seem reminiscent of Michael Moore style filmmaking tricks which, while certainly impactful, often lack context. The science fiction story element is (quite intentionally) thin. Notably, no real solutions to this dilemma are offered save this, a message that Morton’s character leaves behind: “No one did anything to stop them. It's too late for me. I was alone. It may not be too late for you.”
And yes, some of the film’s premises have already been surpassed by events: Bolsonaro, for example, is currently on trial, and the UK. is doing its level best to extricate itself from worst aspects of the Brexit fiasco. But what has occurred in the few months that have elapsed since the film’s creation only seems to confirm its thesis.
As writer David Masciotra noted in his review of the film for Crimereads:
No optimistic futurist could easily dismiss the warning of 2073. It is a warning that comes with greatest urgency and eloquence from Silkie Carlo, a British civil liberties advocate and technology expert, who is also a voice of one of the time capsules. “The totalitarian architecture is here,” she says over real footage of facial recognition tools, “You only need a change of government, and then it’s too late.”
Dystopian filmmaking is now practically a cottage industry, as anyone with multiple streaming accounts probably knows. Science fiction and “speculative” fiction are at the heart of such highly successful mini-and “limited” series ventures like “The Handmaid’s Tale,” The Last of Us” and “Severance,” to name just a few recent examples of this genre. You can glean a quick list of what’s currently streaming in dystopian fiction simply by checking in with the New York Times.
But this one, for some reason, leaves a more searing impact because of its frank topicality and its highly unusual format. Its running time is rather short at 83 minutes, but it packs a serious message during that brief timeframe.
Most importantly, it’s a message that a lot of powerful people would rather you not hear. Which is probably the best reason in itself to check out 2073.
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