Technotise - Edit i ja

Aleksa Gajic is a new name to me, but in Serbia he is a famous comic writer and sketch artist. This film is based on one of his comic books.

This animated feature is not for kids but for adults, teenagers and for people who like Kôkaku kidôtai/ Ghost in the Shell(1995), Akira (1988), Renaissance (2006), Cowboy Bebop: Tengoku no tobira/ Cowboy Bebop: The Movie(2001)etc.

This story about nanotechnology, AI and some deeper existential discussions about life, death etc and is not for people who want fast action sequences and lots of shooting. There are scenes like that but very few.

Granted Aleksa Gajic is not breaking any new grounds but some of the issues he is trying to discuss here has already happened. For example there are stories about college students in USA that have been misusing medication for ADD as means to perform better at tests.

Using those types of medication in order to achieve better is very dangerous. Also you have scientist Kevin Warwick who implanted a chip in his arm so he could automatically open doors,lights etc.

These above examples serves a reminder for future viewers that some of the things featured in the film aren't that far away.

The animation is done in Flash, and it works for the most part. But sometimes I wished that Gajic had cooperated with a Japanese or a french animation studio, for a even smoother animation.

Aleksa Gajics film is very good, and I wish he gets some offers from Japan, France, USA etc because it would be nice to see some more films from him and it is not everyday you get to see well made animated sci fi films like this.

I'm a little bit biased here, all right? While not Serb, as someone who still lives on the Balkans and actually likes most things Serbian, their movie, well, industry included, I approached this with great expectations. And was not disappointed. Might be the familiar actor voices, might be the visual style, might be the whole idea of cyberpunk plot taking place in familiar settings, you won't get out of your own country's movie, well, industry, let alone properly executed. I don't know. The story, while not necessarily original, fits really well in that setting. And watching this in 2021 was quite cyberpunk in its own right.

This movie is absolutely stunning. The animation is superb, the voice acting is epic, the story is great and the mood and depiction of the future are unbelievably well done. The little details like an old man reading the obituaries in the newspaper, but using a large switch on the end of the paper to switch between pages, or the witty banter exchange that spices up a long dialog exchange, these are the things that draw one in.

I was rooted in my armchair from start to finish. Since I'm "local" in a way, I understood the dialog, and I can honestly say the English translation does it no justice (I had English subs on, just to see how they translated it) - if you know someone with Balkan roots, watch it with them and have them explain the moments when you see them burst into laughter - there are no titles that can translate some of the insults or jokes. As they say - translation is like a woman. If it's beautiful, it's not faithful. If it's faithful, it's most definitely not beautiful.

All in all, please watch this movie - it is worth every second of your time and then some. This borders on some of the best anime's I've ever seen, right up there with Samurai Champloo and Cowboy Bebop.

But totally different, because it is animated. There is still graphic nudity in it, if you'll excuse the pun, but that is not what the movie is about. It's about life and the future. Future in a literal way (this plays in 2074 or something and metaphorical, as in where do we go after our visit on this planet.

The science fiction part of it, really does work, as does the thriller part of the movie. I was quite surprised to see such a greatly developed movie come out of Serbia. Seems like they are trying to get on that film map, which I consider a good thing. Always nice to have good new "players" when it comes to movies. This should be a start into an interesting new era of Serbian filmmaking one can hope.

This movie shows that even a small animation studio can do excellent animation and create wonderful full length animated movies.

The only downside of this movie is that it contains many local references. To understand all of the subtle jokes and some more obvious ones, one should be well versed in the culture of Belgrade and contemporary situation.

But even then, there are many timeless topics presented in the movie, quite popular in Sci-Fi genre: do machines have souls, what is life etc.

The concept of the movie is quite simple, but it still managed to surprise even a seasoned Sci-Fi enthusiast with clever plot, good twists and deep vision of the future.

I would recommend this movie to anyone wishing to see something similar to Animatrix or Ghost in the Shell.