Oscar-nominated Arco depicts grim 2075 yet offers a hopeful long-term future

The French animated film Arco, a Best Animated Feature Oscar nominee, opened in U.S. theaters in limited release on Jan. 23 and expands nationwide on Jan. 30; a Polygon review says it presents a bleak 2075 but ultimately leaves viewers with a hopeful message. According to the review, Arco centers on 10-year-old Iris in a 2075 where robots serve as police, teachers and caregivers, and many adults are largely absent from family life, appearing to children only via holograms.

The film’s nearer-future world is clean but underpopulated, marked by nightly wildfires, homes and schools kept safe inside glass domes, and supermarket ration announcements that signal food shortages. The story shifts when a boy named Arco crash-lands in Iris’s time. In Arco’s distant future, humanity lives on gigantic tree-like structures after rising oceans forced a change; those platforms allow serene, agrarian lives.

Time travel in Arco’s era is achieved with caped, rainbow-colored leotards powered by a crystal — a device the review highlights for its whimsical, childlike execution — and young Arco’s inexperience strands him in 2075 after he loses the crystal. Polygon notes the film was executive produced by Natalie Portman and is the feature-length directorial debut of animation studio founder Ugo Bienvenu, who co-wrote it with Félix de Givry.

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