Hungarian writer-director duo Tibor Bánóczki and Sarolta Szabó make their feature debut with White Plastic Sky, a dystopian science-fiction thriller that combines analogue and digital visuals to striking, stylish effect. After winning multiple festival prizes for their animated shorts, as well as a César for Leftover (2016), the duo’s first full-length work is a compelling fantasy drama with a lavish blockbuster look that belies its very modest budget.
The timely plot of White Plastic Sky is rooted in current ecological anxieties but thankfully never feels too preachy or obvious, cloaked as it is in a personal story of love, grief and self-sacrifice. Considering the enduring popularity of post-apocalyptic films, TV shows and computer games – from Mad Max to The Walking Dead to The Last of Us – this dark fairy tale for adults should have potential appeal to a large, genre-friendly global audience following its world premiere in Berlin’s left-field Encounters section.
White Plastic Sky takes place in Central Europe 100 years from now. Following an unexplained ecological catastrophe, most of the planet is now a toxic wasteland uninhabitable for humans, plants or animals. But the Hungarian capital of Budapest, enclosed beneath a vast transparent dome, is one of the last few surviving cities. With limited food and oxygen supplies, the city lives under a strict age curfew that demands all citizens must sacrifice their lives at 50, when they are implanted with a genetically engineered seed that transforms them into a human-tree hybrid, which then becomes a source of edible leaves. This macabre metamorphosis takes place far outside the city, in a vast underground forest bunker called The Plantation.
In rare cases, citizens younger than 50 volunteer to hand over their bodies early. In the depths of grief, 32-year-old Nora (Zsófia Szamosi) signs herself up, which comes as a nasty shock to her psychiatrist husband Stefan (Tamás Keresztes). After she surrenders herself to the Plantation, he frantically sets out to rescue her, scoring a job at the forest bunker under false pretences, then breaking Nora out for a frantic race against time. The reunited pair traverse the desolate wastelands of Europe in search of the reclusive Professor (Géza Hegedus D.) who pioneered the human-tree experiment, the only man alive who can potentially save Nora’s life.
Bánóczki and Szabó initially riff on familiar sci-fi concepts and motifs: there are narrative and visual homages here to classics of the genre like Soylent Green (1973), Logan’s Run (1976), Blade Runner (1982) and The Matrix (1999). But the film-makers soon prove they have fresh things to say with a story that starts out in the realm of current scientific speculation but increasingly comes to resemble a timeless European fairy tale with its quasi-mystical transformations, scary forests, poisonous plants and wizard-like gurus. The lyrical finale, which takes place in a majestic mountainside laboratory overgrown with giant trees, becomes more of a metaphysical meditation on mortality compete with dazzling psychedelic imagery.
White Plastic Sky is a little slow and sombre in places, leaning more towards cerebral chamber piece than action thriller. That said, its superlative visuals are a major selling point and an impressive technical feat. Bánóczki and Szabó use classic rotoscoping for the characters, hand-drawn sketches taken directly from live-action performances, with all the nuanced facial expression and subtle shifts in body language that brings. Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly (2006) and Ari Folman’s Waltz With Bashir (2008) are obvious stylistic touchstones here. These analogue characters are then composited onto 3D digital backdrops, lending the film an appealing blend of textures, lo-fi artisan retro meets high-tech, high-res, gleaming futurism. Some of the computer compositions occasionally look too boxy and clinical, calling to mind the quaint wireframe video-game graphics of early CGI films like Tron (1982), but the cumulative effect is an ever-changing feast for the eyes.
Arriving in an era of heated debate about AI-generated visual art, the painterly splendour of White Plastic Sky reaffirms that human imagination plays just as vital role as technology in the creative process. Bánóczki, Szabó and their team deliver a series of beautifully rendered fantasy tableaux: nature-starved city parks aglow with holographic trees, boats perched on skyscraper rooftops offering “virtual cruises”, a deadly car chase across a vast blood-red forest, a dramatic monorail glide through plunging valleys and crashing waterfalls. The meticulously detailed architecture, vehicle design and landscapes are all richly realised delights, particularly when they they incorporate existing Budapest landmarks like the Széchenyi Chain Bridge, which appears here encased in transparent plastic and spanning a dried-up Danube river, like a mighty Christo artwork from the future.
Directors, screenwriters, cinematography: Tibor Bánóczki, Sarolta Szabó
Cast: Zsófia Szamosi, Tamás Keresztes, Géza Hegedus D, Judit Schell, István Znamenák, Zsolt Nagy, Márton Patkós, Renátó Olasz
Editing: Judit Czakó
Music: Christopher White
Sound, sound design: Stefan Smith
Producers: József Fülöp, Orsolya Sipos, Juraj Krasnohorsky
Production companies: Salto Films (Hungary), Artichoke (Slovakia)
World sales: Films Boutique
Venue: Berlin International Film Festival (Encounters)
In Hungarian
111 minutes
