MAIA: A Solarpunk Story
2024 · 15m · Indonesia
Genres: drama, mystery, sci-fi
Tones: contemplative, tender
A scientist living in Maia, the last standing city on Earth, takes in an outsider from an endangered village, and together they uncover the secrets behind the city.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Solarpunk is the aesthetic consensus right now, which means most filmmakers will botch it by leaning on the wallpaper—but this one risks something stranger by making the utopia claustrophobic and the outsider the real threat to the story we thought we wanted.
The film positions itself within both the sci-fi lineage of isolated-city narratives and the emerging solarpunk aesthetic movement, executing the formal restraint required to let mystery unfold through spatial editing and the careful withholding of information rather than exposition.
The decision to make tenderness the engine of the plot—having the scientist's vulnerability to connection drive the unraveling of the city's secrets—is what transforms what could have been a familiar mystery box into something that earns its emotional weight on a minimal budget.