Metropius: Beneath the Surface
2021 · 18m · Australia
Directed by Dan Macarthur
Genres: animation, crime, sci-fi
Tones: contemplative, dark, mythic
A proof-of-concept short set in Metropius, a dieselpunk retro-futurist city where hover-vehicles, low-tech robotics and noir-tinged crime collide beneath the surface of an industrial sci-fi world.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a proof-of-concept masquerading as a short, which usually makes my skin crawl — but there's something genuinely perverse about building a whole transmedia noir universe in Unreal instead of, you know, just making a film, and I respect the audacity of that refusal.
The dieselpunk aesthetic wears its influences visibly — Fritz Lang meets hardboiled pulp — but the mocap execution feels more tech demo than curated visual argument; it's world-building that announces itself rather than inhabits its own tradition.
The decision to render this entirely through motion-capture rather than traditional animation or live-action is what elevates it: that uncanny specificity of movement, that suspended space between performance and digital figure, becomes the emotional core where a smaller team punches way above its resource ceiling.
Reviews
Stylised noir animation, with crime drama plot lines reminiscent of Peaky Blinders.
An ambitious dieselpunk sci-fi world built in Unreal Engine — a proof-of-concept that sets up animation, comics and games inside a single retro-futurist universe.
Festivals
- Brisbane International Film Festival 2021