The United Kingdom of 2027 is an authoritarian police state, where asylum seekers from global economic depression caused by unexplained human infertility are persecuted, and violence spills onto the streets. Former activist Theo (Clive Owen) is abducted by a militant refugee-rights group led by his estranged wife Julian (Julianne Moore), in an attempt to secure transit papers for a young woman who may hold the key to mankind’s survival, if the group can evade pursuers who would use her for their own ends.

Adapted from the P. D. James novel by director Alfonso Cuarón (Y tu mamá también), twenty years on Children of Men remains an eerily plausible look at the possible near future- a dark cautionary tale equal parts thrilling and sobering, that has lost none of its edge. The London depicted here is familiar yet strange, less a cyberpunk dystopia than an empire in decay, the essence of a surveillance state captured by Cuarón and DOP Emmanuel Lubezki's roving omniscient camera.