White Plastic Sky’ Trailer: Sci-Fi Animation Premieres At Berlinale

EXCLUSIVE: Hungarian directors Tibor Bánóczki and Sarolta Szabó’s futuristic hand-drawn animation White Plastic Sky is set in Budapest in 2123, in a world destroyed by human activity and overpopulation.

To save the planet and the human race, a system has been put in place under which on turning 50, people are transported to a mysterious place called the plantation, where they are gradually transformed into trees.

When the protagonist discovers his wife has voluntarily gone to the plantation ahead of her time, he sets off on a quest to get her back.

Sales agent Films Boutique has released the trailer ahead of its world premiere in the Berlinale’s Encounters Competition.

The work has a hybrid feel between live-action and animation achieved by using rotoscope techniques, involving tracing over live-action footage of real actors.

“Our story contains a deep, emotional journey, and we believed from an early stage of development that only real actors can play our characters to achieve those emotions,” explain Bánóczki and Szabó.

“We cast amazing actors from Hungary. The big task was how we could transform the acting into animation without losing any nuances. We did not use any computer software for the rotoscope, all drawings were made by the hands of very skilled artists, and these sensitive drawings not only preserved the acting but added another layer of different artistic value expression to it.”

The directors say the project has gained unexpected contemporary resonance over the seven-year period in which they brought it to fruition.

“We didn’t dare imagine that we would be making a post-apocalyptic movie during days of an actual real “apocalypse”,” they explain.

“Climate crisis, climate refugees, pandemic, war, energy crisis. The “Poly- Crisis” has become part of our lives now. Science fiction is always about imagining a possible future. Yet White Plastic Sky seems to match what is happening right here, right now.”

Orsolya Sipos and József Fülöp at Hungarian company SALTO Films and Juraj Krasnohorsky at Slovakia’s Artichoke lead produce in co-production with Proton Cinema, RTVS – Radio and Television Slovakia. The film is a Hungarian and Slovak co-production supported by National Film Institute Hungary, Slovak Audiovisual Fund and Eurimages.