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La Jetée
D: Chris Marker (1963) 29m

Post-holocaust tale told mostly in black & white stills. A group of survivors look into time travel as a means of getting some food and supplies, as well as preventing a nuclear war. The hero gets the nod for the trip because of a fading childhood memory of a murder he witnessed on a jetty. Frequently shared the bill with Alphaville. The film is associated with the Left Bank artistic movement.

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Alphaville
D: Jean-Luc Goddard (1965) 100m

Surreal French New Wave science-fiction neo-noir film and festival favourite has popular French private eye Lemmy Caution taking a car through 'intersidereal' space to the futuristic Paris-like city of Alphaville. He faces off against the city's Alpha-60 mega-computer in order to rescue a scientist. Like most arthouse films of its ilk - audiences tend to either love it or hate it.

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A Clockwork Orange
D: Stanley Kubrick (1971) 137m

In the near-future, Droogies' led by Malcolm McDowell (Alex) roam the streets beating people up and raping women. Alex is apprehended and cops some nasty aversion therapy which leads to complications. Graphic violence is set to classical music and Gene Kelly's 'Singin' In the Rain'. Based on the dystopian Anthony Burgess novel, the film takes a dim view of contemporary British society.

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THX 1138
D: George Lucas (1971) 88m

Before he created Star Wars George Lucas dished up this sombre view of a dystopian future in his first feature film. Starring Robert Duvall and Donald Pleasence, it is the story of a man who refuses to take pacifying drugs used to control society through an android police force. The visuals are saturated with white, painting a fairly bleak and spartan picture of things to come.

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Stalker
D: Andrei Tarkovsky (1979) 161m

Russian film with some heavy philosophical and psychological themes, loosely based on the Strugatsky brothers novel 'Roadside Picnic' (1972). A mysterious forbidden Zone appears in an unnamed country. The Stalker of the title is a guide who escorts a writer and a scientist inside the Zone and through the Room. Reality goes haywire. Brilliant and complex - watch it time and time again.

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Brazil
D: Terry Gilliam (1985) 142m

Surrealistic dystopian film with doses of biting social satire and dark humour. Director Terry Gilliam pushed for the more Orwellian title of 1984½ for this tale of a bleak future society dominated by a typically incompetent and brutally authoritarian bureaucracy. A records clerk meets the woman of his dreams through a fatal mix-up. Appearances from Robert De Niro and Michael Palin.

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Π (Pi)
D: Darren Aronofsky (1998) 85m

Migraine headaches start driving a reclusive mathematics whiz nuts while he attempts to get the universe under control and innumerate the stock market. A shady brokerage firm tries to take advantage of him and a Hasidic cabal thinks he can unlock the secrets of the Torah. Low-budget psychological thriller shot on high-contrast black-and-white reversal film adds to its enticing originality.

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Her
D: Spike Jonze (2013) 126m

Theodore Twombly is a lonely, introverted, depressed man who works for a business that has professional writers compose personal letters for their clients. With divorce on the horizon, he purchases an operating system upgrade that includes a virtual assistant with artificial intelligence, designed to adapt and evolve. On giving it a female voice, a relationship soon develops.