District 9 (2009)
Top of Form Bottom of Form District 9 (2009) This is a wholly remarkable film, Politically Charged, speaking of Global Issues, but potent because it kept a narrowly Local Focus. Unlike most fictions about the Chaos of much of sub-Saharan Africa that are supposed to speak of the News of the World, it isn’t set in some Fictional Country but a very specific Time-and-Place. The nation is South Africa, the town, though unnamed, was likely Soweto mixed with another town, Alexandera (it was filmed in Soweto, as Alexandra was more violent at-that-time). It’s a subtle Alternate History buttressing and un-subtle narrative, starting with Aliens arriving on Earth in 1982, and their presence in South Africa may have preserved the Apartheid system (officially dismantled in the Real World in 1994), but the film makes a point that the mess laid out before us is as much post-Apartheid as it was Apartheid-inspired. The film is about Xenophobia, Segregati...