Anti-Utopia


Films suggested by Friends in the area of anti-Utopia: films showing grand social schemes gone wrong and fictional dictatorships with more than a slight resemblance to real ones.


Peaceweb's Movies with a Conscience


Last updated: November 20, 1997
* 1984
UK, 1984, Drama, D:Michael Radford, Original book: by George Orwell, Stars: John Hurt, Richard Burton, Susannah Hamilton, 110 m
After an atomic war, the world is carved up between three empires. London, the capital of Oceania, is ruled by a dictatorship which has total control over its citizens. Winston Smith, a bureaucrat, tries to escape with his lover, Julia.

* Blade Runner
USA, 1982, Drama, D:Ridley Scott, Stars: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, 117 m
Deckard, an L.A. cop in the year 2019, has the job of hunting and terminating replicants, sophisticated robots who have escaped a space colony and have infiltrated earth.
* Brazil
UK, 1985, Drama, D:Terry Gilliam, Screenplay: by Terry Gilliam, Tom Stoppard, and Charles McKeown, 131 m
Deep in the bowels of a technocratic dictatorship enslaved by the output from bizarre computers, a hapless clerk rebels,

* Fahrenheit 451
France, 1967, Drama, D:Francois Truffaut, Stars: Julie Christie, Oskar Werner, Cheryl Cusack, Original book: by Ray Bradbury, 111 m
Truffaut's only film in English, the film portrays a civilization where all books are banned.

* Handmaid's Tale, The
USA/Germany, 1990, Drama, D:Volker Schlondorff, Stars: Robert Duvall, Elizabeth McGovern, Faye Dunaway, Original book: by Margaret Atwood, 109 m
In a right-wing fundamentalists successor state to the shattered United States, a woman who has been reduced to a reproductive slave of a rich military family, joins a rebellion.

* Lord of the Flies
USA, 1990, Drama, D:Harry Hook, Original book: by William Golding, 90 m
British schoolboys, shipwrecked on an island, are divided. Half follow the civilized, rational Ralph and half follow Jack, the leader of the tribe of militarists.

* Mosquito Coast, The
USA, 1986, Drama, D:Peter Weir, Stars: Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren, River Phoenix, Original book: by Paul Theroux, 117 m
An iconoclastic environmentalist and inventor moves his family from the United States to Central America, where he becomes the autocrat of his household empire.

* Olvidados, Los
Mexico, 1950, B&W, Drama, D:Luis Bunuel, Stars: Alfonso Mejia, Jesus Navarro, Estela Inda, 80 m
A young man named Pedro is led astray by a gang of youths in the festering slums of Mexico City.


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Co-ordinator: Carl Stieren, Peace and Social Concerns Committee, [email protected]
Peace and Social Concerns Committee, Ottawa Monthly Meeting, Religious Society of Friends, 91A Fourth Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario K1S 2L1 CANADA
Revised November 20, 1997