5 dystopian films on migration that are shockingly real now

Sci-fi thriller District 9 - Credit: Archant

Thanks to Brexit, Donald Trump and the Syrian conflict these stories draw frightening parallels to our society today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhJ7Mf2Oxs

1. Bladerunner

Loosely based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K Dick, Ridley Scott’s timeless adaptation explores the lives and aspirations of an economic and social underclass; for replicants think migrants, manufactured to protect the lives of those born with the full range of human rights.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW8oSRSzS7M

2. Sleep dealer

A fellow-traveller to Children of Men, Alex Rivera’s futuristic fable of 2009, Sleep Dealer, depicts a dystopian future where the Mexican-US border is completely closed by, erm, a fortified wall, and Mexican workers carry out work in the US using remote controlled machinery and drones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyLUwOcR5pk

3. District 9

Neill Blomkamp tackles themes of racism and xenophobia in this darkly comic tale of aliens arriving on earth to find refuge from their dying planet. Corralled into District 9 (modelled on an apartheid area district of Cape Town), the alien ‘prawns’ are feared and loathed and fed cat food. Replace ‘prawn’ with any other racial stereotype and you have the film’s message.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNpMiI_MJMM

4. Usoni

This Kenyan science fiction series set in 2062 imagines European immigrants fleeing to Africa. It presents the continent as an oasis which desperate Europeans are risking their lives to reach.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9CFcTY_pik

5. Children of Men

Set in the winter of 2027 – 10 years from now – the film opens with the voice of a newsreader announcing that British borders remain closed. Contemporary critics labelled Children of Men as a post 9/11 satire, a film as much about the state of America as it was about the future of Britain

6. The Camp of the Saints

Proving that the progressive left don’t have a monopoly on dystopia. This 1973 French apocalyptic novel by Jean Raspail read by both Ronald Reagan and Francois Mitterrand depicts mass immigration to France that leads to the downfall of the West. The book, which L’Express described as an ‘unrepentant provocative rant’ returned to the bestseller list in 2011.