Superflux and Tim Maughan's new short futures film, The Intersection, shows collective hope after system collapse

Two of our favourite imagineers - the design and futures studio Superflux, and the journalist and SF novelist Tim Maughan - have come together to make this short (15 mins) futures-movie The Intersection. It blends Superflux’s appetite for prefiguring our futures with beautiful visual design and imagining, with Tim’s literary eye for the human details that make futures convincing.

You could call The Intersection, in terms of its storyline, a classic example of hopepunk or solarpunk. But here’s how these two render it:

Set in the near future, 'the Intersection' journeys from a violent present to a cooperative future. Telling stories of active hope from those who have fought to reimagine extractive tech, to serve community, support nature, and value planetary relationships…

The narrative arc of the film revolves around four protagonists (pictured below) whose lives have been shaped by the dissonance of extractive technology norms, misinformation, surveillance capitalism, and context collapse:

Ericka a veteran activist whose movement for justice is derailed by a never-ending feed of misinformation and conspiracies concocted to extract data.

Jake, a journalist whose work is diluted and corrupted by AI systems that helped him prioritize clicks over the truth, taking news out of context and pandering to readers’ “intensely monitored, precisely categorized fears.”

Amp, a disillusioned hardware engineer who set out to change the world using technology, only to have her utopian dream shattered by the realization that the only problem she was solving was finding new ways for technology companies to make money.

Tammi, a young climate migrant who became a refugee in her own country because her family refused to evacuate in the face of an impending storm, citing “fake news” reports.

There is an extraordinary essay on the Superflux site, which shows how deeply they have imagined this world - the film is a condensation of many layers of thinking and feeling their way into the next 20-30 years. Artefacts of this world have been built, plausible histories constructed… Superflux explicitly want it to be a tool for communities to discuss ways forward, resources for which are available here.

A striking example of what we’re tracking for when we think of communities seizing autonomy over what seem to be implacable trends of climate or technology. See our Futures taxonomy.