“It remains an outstanding example of the filmmaker's power to transform an environment through the selection of detail: everything in it is familiar, but nothing is recognizable.” - Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader
“Despite its age it's that rare science fiction film that doesn't seem to have dated at all.” - Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
“A dazzling amalgam of film noir and science fiction. Raoul Coutard’s camera turns contemporary Paris into an icily dehumanized city of the future.” – Tom Milne, Time Out (London)
Godard’s effects-free, black-and-white take on sci-fi is typically iconoclastic: cerebral, disorienting, at once beautiful and alienating. In the eponymous city-state of the future (which uncannily resembles mid-60s Paris), the malevolent Alpha 60 computer has forbidden love, poetry and emotion, but intergalactic government agent Lemmy Caution (French B-movie icon Eddie Constantine) and daughter of the supercomputer’s creator Natasha Von Braun (the luminous Anna Karina) will find a way to short circuit its program.
Awards and Nominations
Golden Bear (Berlin Film Festival, 1965)
Opening Night Selection (New York Film Festival, 1965)
Restoration Premiere (New York Film Festival, 2013)
LO-FI SCI-FI | January 30–February 24, 2026
Big ideas with small budgets, practical effects over digital enhancement, and human-scale story are the hallmarks of LO-FI SCI-FI films. These eight titles engage our love of the science fiction genre, employing a bevy of imaginative approaches: high concepts in quotidian worlds, imaginative production design to approximate mind-bending alternate realities, and the scientific questions of their time in relatable themes of love and self-discovery.
The Film Center is ADA accessible. This presentation will be projected without open captions. The theater is hearing-loop equipped. For accessibility requests, please email filmcenter@saic.edu