‘2073’ Review — Asif Kapadia warns of a future it may be too late to stop

A review of the new documentary, in theaters December 27, 2024

2073, the new film from documentarian Asif Kapadia, is a movie about the present dressed up as a tale about the future. There’s a loose frame story about a woman (Samantha Morton) living in the ruins of “New San Francisco,” which we are told is the Capitol of the Americas. The skies are always orange and they’re filled with surveillance drones, and the woman — credited as “Ghost” — spends her time dumpster-diving to support her meager life in a hollowed-out husk of a shopping mall.

“How did we get here?” she wonders in voiceover, and the film rewinds in time. Most of 2073 is a collage of footage of present-day catastrophes-in-progress, stitching together ongoing stories about the persecution of minorities, the rise of social-media-fueled “populist” authoritarians, the consolidation of power by techno-billionaire libertarian oligarchs, and the escalations of the climate catastrophe, the surveillance state, AI, data-driven genocides, and more.

Basically: we’re screwed.