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Welcome To 1984: Seven dystopian fiction films to help grasp our political climate

On Sunday, the Brattle Theatre is presenting a double feature of 1984 and Francois Truffaut’s adaptation of Fahrenheit 451. They’re showing these films to celebrate National Library Week, but on some level they may be showing solidarity with other cinemas likeCoolidge Corner, Brooklyn’s Nitehawk, and some 200 other theaters which screened the former on April 4 as a form of passive resistance against the pseudo-dystopian forces within our own government.

Of course, dystopian fiction doesn’t begin or end with those two films, and we’ve provided a selection of other movies you can watch on your favorite streaming services to further explore the genre. Prepare to be bummed, folks.

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World of Tomorrow (Netflix)

This Don Hertzfeldt animated film is the shortest feature on this list by 12 minutes: It’s only 16 minutes long, and it may very well be one of the best on this already-bountiful list. A young girl is abducted from her time by a version of future self, and to say any more about the plot of this film would just ruin it for you. Hertzfeldt, who made a name for himself with short films like “Rejected” and longer works like It’s Such a Beautiful Day, makes an absurdly funny but also totally devastating look at the beauty and fallacy of memory, and the devastation of time (in more ways than one). It’s an utterly gorgeous work of animation, with its surface simplicity masking his skilled use and deep understanding of color. If you come away with one thing from this list, please let it be this beautiful little short — we understand how devoted you’d have to be to sit through two different versions of Metropolis, but this short very well might make you cry or change your life.

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