[original title: Технотајз: Едит и ја]
The 2009 Serbian film Technotise - Edit and I is certainly an unexpected find. In a country whose artists can only dream of high budgets, only the dedication and persistence of the creators made this film possible. And it is surprising that such an accomplished work could be created out of very modest circumstances. Technotise is a fascinating film with a solid story, solid animation, interesting characters, fanciful visual ideas, and an exciting soundtrack.
Technotise is based on a Serbian comic book by the same name, taking place in that comic book's universe and using some of its characters. The plot, however, differs, in order to give readers of the comic book a unique and new experience.
The heroine, Edit, struggles to move forward with her life. She still lives at home, even though her mother is a complete nightmare. And she is interested in too many academic subjects, which is one reason why she failed her latest university exams. She is trying to earn some money by taking part in a project at a research facility, while at the same time going to extreme lengths to improve her abilities to revise, learn, and memorise. When things go wrong, Edit’s life is sucked into a world of Artificial Intelligence, unethical research, and corporate abuse of power.
Edit's story takes place in Belgrade, in the year 2074. Robot workers and robot pets are a normality, as are hoverboards and hover-motorcycles, etc. This is not a dystopia per se, as people seem to live pretty comfortable lives, but there is also near-total surveillance and a semi-corrupt secret-police state.
The main topic of this film's plot is Artificial Intelligence. But the film also contains allegories and social commentary. You can easily see allusions to drug use, pregnancy, and cancer, as well as the ingrained level of corruption that exists in some countries, and the general lack of prospects young people in many parts of the world experience.
The way this film creates its world is fascinating, both in terms of the visual representation as well as the world-building. The many facets of this future urban landscape show a great love for detail. The style of the animation is deliberately varied, but animé is the style the film resembles the most. The general tone of the film is also strongly reminiscent of animé, and even the musical score supports that tone, so the Asian influences are obvious. Unlike a lot of Asian animé, however, this story is rather straight forward, and not difficult to follow or understand. The story may be very trippy at times, but it is always clear what is happening, which also indicates strong writing. The main thing that could be criticised about the script is the film’s ending. The film has a "real" ending,
i. e. is not open-ended, but the ending still feels somewhat abrupt and some of the choices are odd and unsatisfying.
There is also a problem with some of the supporting characters. Some are not developed enough to understand what kind of person they are. Others are fully-developed characters, but are simply under-used so it still feels like we do not learn enough about them. "Culling" one or two of these characters from the script would have allowed more screen-time for the others.
The original comic book was created by Aleksa Gajić and Darko Grkinić. For the film, Gajić took on the role of script writer, main director, and co-producer; while both Gajić and Grkinić also worked in a number of art departments. All in all, it took the small team of creators (10-15 people according to imdb) more than 5 years to finish the film, mostly working in a small apartment in Belgrade. The budget is said to have been under 900.000 US-Dollars.
I am not a particular fan of animé in general, but I strongly recommend you check out this film. The current imdb-rating of 7.6 is not a fluke but pretty accurately reflects the film's quality. I would have rated it at about 7.0 to 7.5 myself.