Review of The Deposit (2015)
Seen in 2018.
In an unknown time and country, a high-security underground facility holds people who are being deported to some other unknown place once the paperwork comes through.
Topical science fiction by people who detest science fiction. A comment on the contemporary refugee situation. I have no particular objection to its politics, but the craftsmanship is on the level of a mediocre TV show. The main set is just a bunker and some extremely drab interiors, for no apparent reason. The plot is largely implausible and terribly thin. A lot of the acting is unconvincing, though I appreciate that Vera Vitali was cast for her skills and not typical Hollywood good looks. The most interesting thing about the movie is its complete and wholly deliberate failure to present its premise or do any worldbuilding. The characters all wear non-descript clothes and eat non-descript foods. There is no branding or other specificity, as if there really is no context in their world. This is what usually happens when the bourgeois cultural establishment realizes that it needs science fiction to tell the story it wants to tell but every bigshot on the production team despises science fiction, incorrectly associating the genre’s spectacles with all careful speculative thinking.
References here: Jimmie (2017).