Fantastic Fest 2009–Metropia (2009)

Directed by: Tarik Saleh
Written by: Frederick Edin/Tarik Saleh/Martin Hultman/Stig Larsson

Only one movie tonight? Yep. I had to work my real(ish) job and I’m dog tired. This festival is LONG!

In the not too distant future, Roger (Vincent Gallo) is a nebbish. He’s paranoid, nerdy and, inexplicably, has a hot girlfriend who puts up with his weirdness. And he hears voices in his head that tell him what he should and shouldn’t do.

When he sees Nina (Juliette Lewis), the girl from the shampoo commercials that are plastered everywhere, he follows her and learns that it’s not paranoia if they really ARE after you. But will they know what to do with you once they get you?

This animated film delves deep for the paranoia of Kafka and the strangeness of Gilliam with a twist of Vertigo thrown in for good measure. The animation is a big part of the bizarro world that writer/director Tarik Saleh has created. He is the son of an Egyptian stop-motion animator who moved his family to Sweden. Tarik vowed to never work in animation, but here he is, creating a whole new animation process.

Basically, it looks like they took photos of people and animated them, then put them on top of almost South Park-esque bodies. They’re a bit more detailed than that, but you kinda get the picture. It’s a disturbing, yet kind of beautiful style of animation that works really well in this dystopian world.

The story is kind of an old one (giant corporations rule the world and are spying on all of us through their products), but Tarik has a new twist on things: the corporate heads are kind of idiots. They’re pretty much just using the whole world as wank material. And, hey, there’s nothing wrong with that, right?

I liked this movie a lot. I probably would have liked it better if I hadn’t been nodding off through the whole thing, but it was still pretty damn impressive. And the voice cast that Tarik gathered is pretty impressive, too. Along with Gallo and Lewis, he picked up , Stellan and Alexander Skarsgard and Udo Kier. Wait…Udo Kier? You mean the creepiest German man on the planet?

Yeah. Not your typical cartoon voice cast, and that’s why it’s so brilliant.

Check the movie out. Swedish animation is about to explode.

This played with a short called

ATTACK OF THE ROBOTS FROM NEBULA 5

A Spanish man (who I think maybe is supposed to be a child?) is trying to warn everyone that aliens are coming to kill him. His mom, though, keeps putting his drawings of the aliens on their refrigerator.

A cute short that runs a bit too long, but has its moments.