One hundred years in the future, humanity is facing the consequences of the environmental degradation they’ve wrought: at the age of 50, every citizen is voluntarily transformed into a tree so that they might supply oxygen to a withering world. Stefan (Tamás Keresztes) is at peace with all of this until his wife Nóra (Zsófia Szamosi) decides to metamorphize before her time. Tearing the social contract to shreds, Stefan abandons the relative safety of the plastic dome encasing Budapest and races across a devastated landscape on a rescue mission to save Nóra.
Fashioning their sci-fi narrative from extensive interviews with botanists and other scientists, Tibor Bánóczki and Sarolta Szabó employ rotoscoped animation that recalls previous mind-benders like A Scanner Darkly to render a richly detailed dystopia. Recognizing that humanity is teetering at the precipice of a climate cataclysm, White Plastic Sky is speculative fiction that serves as a clarion call for us to consider concerns greater than our own and rethink our relationship with the world. It offers spectacle to behold, and a warning to be heeded.
Grand Competition Feature Film, Berlin 2023
Series Media Partner
Tamás Keresztes, Zsófia Szamosi, Géza Hegedűs D., Judit Schell, István Znamenák
Hungary/Slovakia
2023
Altered States
In Hungarian with English subtitles
At Vancity Theatre
At The Rio
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Producer
József Fülöp, Orsolya Sipos, Juraj Krasnohorsky
Screenwriter
Tibor Bánóczki, Sarolta Szabó
Cinematography
Tibor Bánóczki, Sarolta Szabó
Editor
Judit Czakó
Production Design
Tibor Bánóczki, Sarolta Szabó
Original Music
Christopher White
Directors
Tibor Bánóczki
Sarolta Szabó (1975, Budapest, Hungary) and Tibor Bánóczki (1977, Sárospatak, Hungary) are a Hungarian filmmaker duo.
After graduating at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, Sarolta continued her studies at Royal College of Art and Tibor at the National Film and Television School. Here they started their artistic partnership focusing on animated film projects. In 2010 they moved to France where they completed two animated short films Les Conquérants and Leftover which were selected in numerous festivals such as Sundance, and Clermont-Ferrand. Both films were shortlisted to the César Award. Currently they live and work in Hungary. White Plastic Sky is their first animated feature film.
Filmography: White Plastic Sky (2023)
Sarolta Szabó
Sarolta Szabó (1975, Budapest, Hungary) and Tibor Bánóczki (1977, Sárospatak, Hungary) are a Hungarian filmmaker duo.
After graduating at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, Sarolta continued her studies at Royal College of Art and Tibor at the National Film and Television School. Here they started their artistic partnership focusing on animated film projects. In 2010 they moved to France where they completed two animated short films Les Conquérants and Leftover which were selected in numerous festivals such as Sundance, and Clermont-Ferrand. Both films were shortlisted to the César Award. Currently they live and work in Hungary. White Plastic Sky is their first animated feature film.
Filmography: White Plastic Sky (2023)
Missing VIFF? Check Out What's Playing at the VIFF Centre
The History of Concrete
After attending a workshop on pitching saccharine Hallmark movies, John Wilson tries to apply all the same best practices to his documentary about concrete. Frequently absurd and endlessly entertaining detours, asides, and digressions ensue.
La Bola Negra
A big, old-school historical melodrama gets a thrillingly modern, queer makeover from Spanish duo Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, who artfully juggle three gay protagonists across stories set in 1932, 1937, and 2017. Winner: Best Director, Cannes. Screening on 35mm.
NAZA
NAZA is a codeword euphemistically used by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians it expects will be killed in an airstrike. This chilling documentary exposes the policy and process of state-sanctioned mass killings.
The Mad Dog of Europe
The story of an unmade screenplay from the writer of Citizen Kane. In 1932, Herman Mankiewicz wrote a film that foretold the persecution of the Jews and the war in Europe. But Hollywood wouldn't take the risk and The Mad Dog of Europe was never made.
The Mortal Storm
In this explicitly anti-Nazi melodrama directed by Frank Borzage (Three Comrades) a year before the US entered the war, Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart fall in love as their friends and family fall prey to the rise of Hitler's Nazi party in Germany.
Three Comrades
Scripted by F Scott Fitzgerald, Three Comrades (1938) was the first US studio film to chronicle the rise of European fascism in the 30s. Three German veterans open up a repair shop and try to regain a normal life, but political extremists have other ideas.