I remember when I first came to contact with Metropia. It was trough our favorite movie site Twitch and I instantly fell in love with the cool visual style of the movie. Since then I have been eagerly anticipating to see it. Finally at Love & Anarchy film festival the Zombies got to see it.
First check out the trailers below.
Metropia takes place in a not-so-distant future. The world is running out of oil and the undergrounds have been connected into a gigantic subway network beneath Europe. Whenever Roger (Vincent Gallo) from Stockholm enters this system he hears a stranger’s voice in his head. He looks to the mysterious Nina (Juliette Lewis) to help him escape the disturbing web of the Metro, but the farther they travel, the deeper he’s involved in a dark conspiracy.
Director Tarik Saleh’s Metropia deals with themes of monitoring, surveillance and control. It’s a grim world where a popular shampoo can transforms your hair into little antennas so your thoughts can be heard and your mind can be manipulated to consume or worse.
Metropia’s true magic lies in it’s amazing and unique visual style. The weirdly realistic animation is a mixture of still photographs and 2D Animation, the kind I don’t ever recall seeing before. The photographs were edited in Photoshop, and animated in Adobe After Effects. Apparently ordinary people spotted on the streets were used as models for the characters. Director Tarik Saleh has a background both in animation and graphic design, which would explain his ability to create such a beautiful and absurd world as in Metropia.
An example of Metropia's beautiful color palette
Metropia also has quite the impressive voice cast. Vincent Gallo plays Roger, who accepted his part as the lead voice actor after having seen 30 seconds of finished animation as well as hearing that German actor Udo Kier, of whom Gallo was a fan, already was attached to the project. Juliette Lewis is the voice of the mysterious Nina and the voice in Roger’s head, Stefan, is portrayed by Alexander Skarsgård. Also Stellan Skarsgård gives his voice to Ralph.
The Skarsgårds
CONCLUSION
Metropia is a one of a kind animation. It is not without flaws, but it is still one of most original and captivating movies of 2009. I can’t wait to see what director Tarik Saleh will do next.
Ps. Once again I have no news on when this movie will be distributed in Finland, but when I do I will let you know. In the mean time you can check out more info from the official site.
