In director Ugo Bienvenu’s Arco, ten-year-old Arco inadvertently travels back from the end of the millennium to 2075, where he meets Iris, who wants to help him, while others of her time, like robot Mikki, can’t process what his existence means since there’s no record whatsoever of him.
Awards Buzz spoke with Bienvenu about developing this story and with Natalie Portman, who is both a producer on the film and a member of the English-language voice cast, about how this concept of the future stands out from other works and gives some hope for what’s to come.
Bienvenu spoke about constructing not one but two futures:
“It was actually really simple. I was thinking, okay, let’s be honest, tomorrow isn’t going to be way better than today. I can’t imagine it. Let’s face the truth and say, this is the world they live in. But, even if we can’t create a better tomorrow, we can create a better after-tomorrow, if we rely on something other than calculation and rely on emotions and sharing and what makes us humans, in fact. If we trust that, we’ll maybe be able to create a better future for ourselves.”
Portman has done plenty of science-fiction and described what hooked her about this:
“I loved that Ugo’s vision did have these forking paths of what happens in different scenarios, in different human interventions, and I think that it gives a lot of hope in the possibility that human creativity and imagination can lead us to a better place.”
Bienvenu stressed why it was that animation was the perfect format for this film:
“I think this movie needed softness, and animation is the world of softness for me. Animation is subtle. It’s a sensitive truth. I thought it was the best medium. Also, I’m an animation director. I’m a drawer. I like drawings, and so it was natural.”
Arco is now playing in select theaters.
