Alien Nation

Auditorium Belgrade

🎬 "Alien Nation" (USA, 1988)

Los Angeles at the beginning of the 1990s, where for several years now, 'newcomers' - aliens have been living in the city, whom society seems to have accepted but in reality keeps on a short leash. Detective Matthew Sykes gets a 'newcomer' partner named George Francisco, and their first joint work is the investigation of a murder, in which crime, everyday xenophobia, and a conspiracy of the powerful intertwine too quickly.

The 'buddy cop' formula is used here as a tool: the film maintains tension between two types of norms - human and alien - and on how easily the city turns any 'Other' into a convenient object for humiliation, exploitation, and fear. Meanwhile, the daily lives, physiology, and culture of the aliens are deliberately described to make the difference noticeable, funny, sometimes awkward - and therefore perfect for discussions about racial and class boundaries, and assimilation as a form of pressure.

"Alien Nation" has a rare quality of late 1980s studio sci-fi: it looks like genre sci-fi, but the narrative structure is constructed as a social statement. It's a film about how society creates a class of outcasts - and devises explanations to justify its supposedly natural order of things. And the more confidently the film moves along the detective trajectory, the clearer its main nerve emerges: the scariest thing is not the aliens, but the majority's ability to consider the 'Other' as alien.

• 🗓 March 5 (Thursday) 19:00
• 🎫 Cost: 1000 RSD
• 📍 Vojvode Dobrnjca 48, Belgrade https://maps.app.goo.gl/e9z8stFHUZdGM7u88