Cyberpunk Cinema

Subgenres have rules, but rules are meant to be broken.

Looking back at four decades of cyberpunk film, there are unmistakable tropes. Tech has infiltrated all aspects of life, unchecked capitalism rules the roost, social fabric has disintegrated and usually a (white male) hero rises up. But which films conform to the rules of the subgenre, and which film’s break free?

Celebrate the outliers of the subgenre. Kathryn Bigelow subverts the hero paradigm but letting Angela Bassett emerge as the hero in Strange Days, David Cronenberg casts Jennifer Jason Leigh as the world’s best videogame designer in eXistenZ, and Neptune Frost sees a Cyberpunk narrative move out of a Japan-infused cityscape to a Barrundi village.

Join ACMI in the cinema as they avoid conformity, break the rules and celebrate the films that defined and redefine cyberpunk.