20 Best Science Fiction Movies Released Since 2000

A24 is responsible for some of the best genre films of the past decade, and yet ironically their genre offerings usually play in territory that traditionally belonged to prestige drama and arthouse pictures. And these usually get the press they deserve. Yet, despite starring the internationally marketable Colin Farrell, alongside highly visible stars Jodie Turner-Smith and Justin H Min, the studio’s science fiction drama After Yang has never really found the spotlight.

Kogonada’s film finds partners Jake and Kyra (Farrell and Turner-Smith) and their adopted daughter Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja) devastated by the sudden breakdown of Yang (Min), a second-hand android brought into the family to help Mika connect with her Chinese heritage. Struggling to repair Yang out of warranty, the family go to various backroom and black market technicians, and, through his memory bank, quietly and tenderly come to understand his experience from his perspective.

In a time of M3GAN, Companion and Ex Machina, After Yang takes a different approach to the android, pairing sci-fi with the small-scale, dreamy, emotional approach to filmmaking we expect in an A24 drama. Yang is positioned as an individual, allowing us to view his memories as he saw them, to see which simple moments he thought important, and to understand how his previous lives shaped his complex understanding of the world.  It’s a meditation on what constitutes a mind and a person, and what human experience is as a whole.