Screening + Q&A: 2073

2073 blends compelling archive footage and commentary with sci-fi drama in this vital cinematic warning from a dystopian future to tackle the biggest challenges endangering our present day and the existence of humanity.

It’s the year 2073 where the worst fears of modern life have been realised. Surveillance drones fill the burnt orange skies and militarised police roam the wrecked streets, while humans hide away underground, struggling to remember a free and hopeful existence. In this ingenious mixture of visionary science fiction and nonfiction, Academy Award® and BAFTA winner, Asif Kapadia (Senna, Amy) transports us to a future foreshadowed by the terrifying realities of our present. Academy Award® nominee Samantha Morton (Minority Report) plays a survivor besieged by nightmare visions of the past—a past that happens to be our present, visualised through contemporary footage interconnecting today’s global crises of authoritarianism, unchecked big tech, inequality, and our global climate crisis.

2073 is an urgent, unshakable vision of a dystopic future that could very well be our own.

Asif Kapadia is an Academy Award, BAFTA, Grierson and Grammy Award-winning film director, writer and producer and one of the most influential filmmakers of our generation. Perhaps best known for his acclaimed trilogy of films Amy, Senna and Diego Maradona on child geniuses and the price of fame, these groundbreaking films work dramatically like fiction films but are constructed entirely from archive footage. In 2001 Kapadia made his epic debut fiction feature The Warrior starring the late great Irrfan Khan and shot in India. The film won Outstanding British Film of the Year and Special Achievement by a Director, as well as being nominated for a BAFTA. Kapadia directed episodes of the Mindhunter series for Netflix; series directed and executive produced the critical hit music series 1971: The Year Music Changed Everything (AppleTV+); and also co-directed and executive produced the mental health series The Me You Can’t See (AppleTV+) starring Oprah, Prince Harry and Lady Gaga.

Ava Lee is a campaigner from the investigative, campaigning organisation Global Witness. For the last five years, she has built and led a team of investigators, researchers, advocates and comms specialists working to combat some of the biggest harms caused by Big Tech companies. This has included exposing how Meta’s job advertising algorithm discriminates along gender lines, breaching equalities legislation, and a series of investigations that have demonstrated how companies including Meta, TikTok, X and Youtube are unprepared to deal with incitement to genocide and violence (in Myanmar and Ethiopia), and are equally unprepared to deal with serious electoral misinformation ahead of significant elections (including in the US, Brazil, Kenya, UK, South Africa, Ireland and India). For the last year, she has also headed up a climate disinformation unit - with work including exposing a bot network supporting Azerbaijan’s COP presidency. Her team’s work has been featured across all of the major wires and top-tier publications, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the BBC, AP, PA and AFP.