Urbance
2015 · 7m · Canada
Directed by Joël Dos Reis Viegas, Sébastien Larroudé
Tones: dark, provocative, theatrical
In a dystopian future ruled by an invasive corporation, a deadly genetic virus has made sex fatal and segregated young men and women into rival gangs. At a secret underground nightclub, lost teenagers stage electrifying dance battles and drink illegal N-DORFIN while evading the high-tech corporate police known as Mediators.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A dystopia where sex is literally weaponized and teenagers respond by turning underground dance floors into acts of bodily defiance—this is the kind of premise that makes you sit up and ask "wait, WHAT?" before realizing it's exactly the subversive move a tired sci-fi landscape needed. The anime-meets-video-game aesthetic could've been gimmick, but instead it becomes the formal language of rebellion itself.
The film situates itself deliberately within the lineage of cyberpunk visual culture and experimental music video, but what anchors it is the formal rigor of the editing—each cut synced not just to beat but to narrative stakes, making the dance sequences function as both spectacle and syntax. It's aware of what it inherits and what it's adding to that conversation.
The single decision to make the dance battles *the* language of resistance rather than decoration—where every choreographic choice becomes plot—is what transforms what could have been style-over-substance into something genuinely propulsive on a pilot budget. That commitment to letting movement *say* something rather than just accompany dialogue lifts the whole premise.
Reviews
A pastiche of Japanese anime and video game influences filtered through talented Canadian designers, it is wild kinetic fun that has the potential for cult status.
Fluid, beautifully stylized, and looks like nothing seen before — so much energy, rhythm and personality, though its futuristic application of contemporary slang is sometimes cringe-worthy.