Review of Carbon: A Story of Tomorrow

"Carbon: A Story of Tomorrow" is (despite the title) an Indian Hindi-language short film from 2017 and this is a science fiction movie and this genre and India is something you would not initially make a connection between these two, but Maitrey Bajpai and Ramiz Ilham Khan here show everybody how it's done and I hope their 25-minute movie here inspires other Indian filmmakers to give it a go. I am especially surprised I liked this quite a bit because I am not that much of a fan of Indian movies (except The Lunchbox) and science fiction is definitely among my least favorite genres, but the approach they gave it here reminded me a bit of the Oscar-winning movie Ex Machina at times and it's not considerably worse. The idea of oxygene being a really important and expensive good, a drug even, is good enough for the basic setting as this film takes us way into the future. Simple, yet intriguing. The lead actor has nice charisma and screen presence too and the acting itself is not too bad I would say either, actually fairly decent by everybody involved. The robot reference involving one central character was included with nice focus as well. Yes maybe the film takes itself a bit more seriously when it starts elaborating on refugees and the Gandhi quote near the end in terms of inspiring out generation to shape the future in a way where they are happy to get this world from us was honorable, but yeah a bit exaggerated too I'm afraid. Nonetheless, this does not take away from the entertainment factor. This film is a decent success in terms of script and performance, but also in terms of technical aspects like effects and sound, but also visual aspects like costumes and set decorations. I am indeed a bit surprised how well this turned given how little experience India has with the science fiction genre. So yeah, go see this one. Most likely, you will not regret the watch here.