Two far-off futures collide in Arco, a French animated feature in which a boy runs away from home and into the past via time-travel, ending up in an ecologically fraught society where homes are mechanically encased in domes whenever the winds or fires become too severe. (Both time frames exist well ahead of ours.) The film manages a delicate balance of cynicism and hopefulness—the latter represented by the fact that the time travel involves a cloak which emits a stream of rainbows. Arco is co-directed by Ugo Bienvenu and Gilles Cazaux. Cazaux worked on 1973’s Fantastic Planet, and the influence shows in the detailing of these futures: homes resting on platforms amidst the clouds; caring robots with heart-shaped CPUs; sleeping pods that hold humans like embryos. Add Arnaud Toulon’s gentle score, which has echoes of Joe Hisaishi’s work for Studio Ghibli, and the result is a sci-fi fantasy that’s part Fantastic Planet and part Miyazaki.
(12/27/2025)
