Arco

With his first feature film, accomplished director and comic book artist Ugo Bienvenu takes us into the future, to a world where rainbows are the traces left behind by time travellers. More specifically, he takes us to two futures, first with the distant future of Arco, a young boy from a family of biologists specialised in Paleolithic plants. For their research, his family regularly travels back to prehistoric times, much to the dismay of Arco, who is passionate about dinosaurs but too young to make the leap through time. Determined to break the rules, he steals his sister’s equipment and clumsily attempts to make the journey alone. After an uncontrolled fall into the past, he crashes in 2075, where he befriends Iris, a little girl who feels neglected by her parents. Together, they must find a way to repair the boy's time suit so he can return to his own world.

Beyond its polished aesthetics, the film is striking in its devotion to presenting a future that is both plausible and utopian, where humanity seems to be gradually addressing the problems that plague it today. It is a “solar punk” vision that stands out for its optimism and its faith in the human race's ability to overcome our current existential crises and make the right decisions.

While in the relatively recent past of Iris, for example, the Earth is still suffering from our mistreatment, in the distant future of Arco it is slowly recovering, a healing process symbolised by the “great fallow” system, where humanity has built structures resembling huge trees to give the planet time to rest. The film also presents a particularly positive view of artificial intelligence through the character of Mikki, a robot nanny devoted to Iris's well-being and caring for her like a father. It’s a refreshing perspective on the subject. Even if it seems implausible at present, it instills a much-needed sense of hope in the future of technology. Science fiction fans will certainly enjoy discovering the inventive solutions the Remembers animation studio imagines for everyday problems in the universe it has created, as well as comparing the film’s two futures — the near and the distant.

As gentle as a ray of sunshine, the film richly deserved its prestigious Cristal Award for Best Feature Film at the 2025 Annecy International Animation Film Festival, as well as its Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature Film.