Technotise: Edit i ja (2009)

Directed by: Aleksa Gajić

Writer: Aleksa Gajić

Wow! A Serbian animated sci-fi movie, now that’s definitely something you don’t see every day! In fact, you never see it! What’s more important – not only is this not crap, it’s actually a great movie that I can wholeheartedly recommend.

It takes place in Belgrade in the year 2074. Edit M. Stefanović, a young psychology student and the lead character in the story, after failing an important exam, decides to implant in her body a memory chip that is used to improve capabilities, so to speak. Of course, those chips are illegal, but when has that prevented students from cheating, eh? Anyway, the story takes an unexpected turn when Edit sees the actual formula of Life, Universe and Everything, you know, the one that reduces everything to a single equation (the thing Steven Weinberg wrote about in Dreams of a Final Theory). It is explained that when a computer sees that equation, it briefly becomes aware of itself and then immediately shuts down. However, the chip in Edit’s body reacts in a completely different way – it starts to multiply and gains more and more control, threatening her very existence.

Of course, this all is hardly new, I imagine this kind of stuff happens regularly in Japanese anime/manga, but that’s not really important. While maybe not being tremendously original, the story is very well written and serves to keep your interest throughout. The film is based on the graphic novel Technotise, which was illustrated by Aleksa Gajić and written by Darko Grkinić, and it shares its characters, though the story is different. Aleksa Gajić (primarily a great comic book artist, rather than a filmmaker) wrote the screenplay by himself. Why Grkinić wasn’t involved I don’t know, and the “making of” featurette doesn’t give an answer – in any case, he did work on the film, in the animation department, and he also voiced one of the more amusing supporting characters.

The real star of this movie is the animation. It’s really refreshing to see something hand-drawn after all those 3D animation films which I find somewhat soulless. The graphic novel look is carefully recreated, and while there is some 3D animation in there, it all looks like you have a moving comic book in front of you. The 2.5Dishness is provided by the occasional multilevel background scroll, like in some older platform computer games, and there are numerous funny visual references (for example, the modified Yugoslavian police cars from 1980’s) that give the movie a really unique appearance. Unfortunately, if you’re not from these parts, most of these will fly right over your head, but that’s really not that important as it’s not critical to the story in any way. Okay, I’m not very good at words and stuff like that, but trust me on this one – this looks good! To round the audio-visual appearance, there is great electronic music which really fits the atmosphere and is also a great listen on its own (a feature supported on the original DVD).

If we really have to bitch about something, it’s the characters, which are mostly dull and uninteresting, with some being real pain(s) in the ass(es) (I can’t even begin to think how to correctly plural this). Also, with the exception of some supporting characters voiced by some legendary Serbian actors, the voice acting is weak, to say the least. But that’s about it.

What’s really amazing is the fact that this movie was entirely made in a small apartment in Belgrade, by only 15 or so people (led by Aleksa Gajić, who worked pretty much on everything). Shows how talent, dedication and hard work can largely make up for lack of money. Let that be a lesson to all of you youngsters out there!

I think this one is pretty hard to find outside former Yugoslavia. I know there is a (subtitled) English version, but how available it is, I don’t know. If you stumble upon it, be sure to check it out, and in the meantime watch this trailer to give you a taste of it. Over and out!