User reviews

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 was pretty interesting just for the fact that it's Serbian cyberpunk!

In 2074, Belgrade. Edit is a really smart but bored young woman who is so bored by her classes she's finding it difficult to pass some really important exams. She's also living a student life with her mom, who resents her, and her father who seems pretty out of it all the time.

She also spends her days with an autistic man as her job. When she's not doing that, she's hanging out with her friends. One of the things I didn't like about it was that as with a lot of anime, it over sexualizes Edit incredibly. Basically everyone does, including the autistic kid, her boyfriend, her friends, the scientist. It really detracts from the story, for me.

After the film sufficiently shows edit is a victim of the system, who never feels satisfied with her purpose in life and her boyfriend just wants to have sex all the time - it starts to pickup where she gets her hands on some illegal tech that will allow her to have perfect recall of things she sees and therefor, reads. It's her hope that with this tech she can pass her exams with flying colours.

This is where things get interesting, it starts exploring bio-punk tech concepts with the idea that this chip begins to feed off of her in a sort of symbiotic relationship with one another. This culminates in her having an AI presence from the tech bonded within her. She begins to learn more of herself by interacting with this construct and her life also goes careening into a ditch.

There's subsequent action that was pretty cool. The animation was really unique and cool. The language was very neat, I'd never heard Serbian before and it's a pretty cool language!

The exploration of what such tech could do to us with the possible ramifications were really interesting. There was some interesting eastern philosophy brought into it and the context was good. I liked Edit as a character, I liked most things except the over sexualization that was pretty overt. I ended up rating it a 7. 

Luc Besson's Lucy had a lot of promise, conceptually, but the entire execution of the film was woefully underwhelming and wholly frustrating. It's one of those movies where at the end of it you start picking apart all of the inconsistencies and shortcomings of the plot.

It's something upon which I occasionally ponder: what would Lucy have been like had it been less a jumbled, ideologically-driven mess and more saturated and honest in its themes?

Well, you get Technotise - Edit i Ja.

(Sorry it took nearly three paragraphs to get there, but I'm there gosh darn-it!)

The animated film basically works on an almost identical concept to Lucy and the action sci-fi flick Upgrade. I don't want to give anything away for those of you who haven't seen it, but Technotise is more philosophical sci-fi rather than action sci-fi.

It has a couple of action scenes that are fairly well animated and quite engaging, but they're far and few between.

Majority of the film is about a college student name Edit that has a rather technophysio experience thanks to a formula from an autistic genius, an illegally obtained chip, and a trip through a lab being funded to scope the future.

The animated Serbian film dabbles in a lot of interesting concepts of futurism, from robotic pets and electronic pleasure clubs, to hoverboard races and cyborg DJs. It's definitely on the higher-end of the sci-fi spectrum than some fanfare out there, but at the same time a lot of the technology still seems grounded in some measure of possibility.

The real hook for the film, though, syncs up with the constantly flirting topic of cybernetic ontology... or artificial beings. The film doesn't really come down one way or another on the topic, it just presents them and then leaves the viewer to ponder them.

Unlike Lucy the film doesn't deify its lead, nor does it elevate her to hero status. Quite the contrary. Despite delving into some fascinating subject matter, Edit is never given a pedestal or portrayed as being too big to fail or too strong to fall. She's a rather realized character in a tale told both with exquisite vision and artistic originality.

Yes, the film can be rough around the edges given its limited budget but you can tell it was made with a lot of heart and passion, something missing from a lot of other bigger budget flicks produced these days.

Anyway, I could write almost all day about Technotise, but I'll simply say that much like Uma História de Amor e Fúria or Mind Game, this is definitely a film to watch if you enjoy something both visually engaging and philosophically thought-provoking.

I've been a Japanese-anime collector for years, this was quite a surprise. Funny how things go, I found a link to the YouTube in a David Brin article, and didn't know quite what to expect.

One full-length movie later, it's just ... WOW.

Futuristic story, great character design, animation quality with attention to foreground and background, interesting plot with action, adventure, relationships, philosophy and more. Glad there were subtitles.

Made me want to go back to Belgrade (was there in 1970) and shake the creator's hand. The work of one person ... amazing. That's why it's definitely a 10.

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.

I couldn't believe something like this came from Serbia. The movie is amazing. The story, the animation, the design, the mood... It's thrilling! Before I start in-depth reviewing, first I'll say - thank god it's NOT a kids' movie. I'm really into animation and I hate how big world-famous cartoon studios make so many children cartoons, that on the mention of word 'cartoon' people think of something for kids. This is NOT a children musical, it's an animated movie for grown-ups. (Some scenes may even be inappropriate for children)

OK, now where do I start? OK, story first...

The story is fantastic. The movie never felt boring, the story really keeps you interested. Don't worry, I won't give out too much, don't wanna spoil the movie, so I'll just keep it simple - It's a futuristic story. It's NOT some Sci-Fi adventure with impossible inventions and space traveling action - it's just happening in the future, things are still simple, it's just about an ordinary girl (Edit) who is a psychology student and who, after 6 failed exams, decides to implant a memory chip inside her to help her pass the exams. She also has a job at some state security agency or something in taking care of an autistic math genius who discovered an important formula, but no computer was able to calculate it. Once she sees the formula and the chip remembers it, weird things start happening to her, and it gets more and more exciting. :D The characters are very good, and the humor is really great and refreshing for the dramatic and kinda emotionally-hard story. So the story is 10/10.

Next.... Design/Animation The movie is pure eye candy! The camera angles, the colors, the imaginativeness... Really great. Animation is a combination of 3D and traditional 2D animation. 3D is mostly for backgrounds in some scenes where camera changes the angle and so, but characters and objects are always 2D. Which I really liked, cause cartoons sometimes can seem too 2-dimensional, you know, no rotating camera, just translating left- right, so that's a plus if you ask me. As for 2D animation, it's perfect. It was done by professional comic artists so it's no wonder. You can see that in some parts they increased frame rate with CG in- betweens, but the movie was made on a really low budget and was done by literally 10 - 20 people (no wonder it took them like 5 years to finish) so I'm OK with it. The design and backgrounds of the movie are fantastic too! As I said pure eye candy! Backgrounds are also hand-drawn which gives the movie it's artistic feeling and always fit the mood of a scene. To Animation/Design/Art I give 10/10.

Music.... It's very good too. It was beautifully composed and every score fits the scene perfectly. There is one 'featured' song too (from artists outside the project), which was also chosen very well and fits the movie. The main theme is epic! (especially the version which starts with piano, the other remix is played in the movie tho). 9/10

So all in all, it's a movie worth to watch. I guarantee you'll like it. Trust me, I myself was totally skeptical towards it since I hate sci-fi and futuristic stuff, and it blew me off!

This non-Japanese cartoon film actually deserves some credit for its catchy theme and fast-paced execution. The characters have diverse personalities and a hint of a tendency to be rebellious in the train of thought without the usual clichéd stereotypes. Overall well made, but not saved from heavy flaws in the lack of intimacy between some key characters (they did show some intimacy but it felt like a flash video clip). Some scenes were also jumpy I felt may disrupt the flow of the plot, especially given the sci-fi nature of its theme that can appear complicated to some of the audience members. The biggest flaw in my opinion is the unsatisfactory ending, which felt too rushed and not doing enough to justify the whole 1.5 hours of the movie.

This is really cool! We need more of this style of movies.

Why do I call this film the first? Isn't "Film Noir" from 2007 the first? Well, in this film, they speak in native Serbian, and almost all the background texts are written in Serbian. In contrast, "Film Noir" was in American co-production and didn't have any Serbian elements, except for the crew who worked on it.

This film couldn't have had a better cast, who did a completely decent job, considering that this time they weren't dubbing some foreign cartoon, but were working on an original project from their homeland.

AND NOW TO THE MOST IMPORTANT ELEMENT OF THIS FILM: ANIMATION The animation style reminds me a lot of Marvel's "What If...?", except it is a hundred times worse in quality. The animation simply can't be compared to Hollywood standards, as it was made in small Serbia, with a modest budget of just under a million euros.

That amount of money only leads me to note that my two sharp eyes spotted over 50 animation errors during my first viewing, which is completely absurd given that three people were responsible for the final check and correction of the animation, to whom I would gladly give a boot from my studio. Instead of the animation being the dominant aspect of this film, it only embarrassed itself along with poor editing in some action scenes. It seemed to me that in every frame they cut the effort and budget by 50% from the maximum potential of the animation. Some backgrounds and textures were phenomenal, while others just fit okay into the scene.

The 3D renders are excellently designed but very poorly animated, especially when throwing a tool or object like those tablets or a peasant throwing a rake, as if gravity from Mars was in play.

The story is complex, but at a moderate level of understanding, making it interesting. The script and story were a big win for this film because without them, this film would be a failure in all aspects. There were also many pop culture references, such as a Serbian peasant shouting "I'll call the kids", and Sloboda Milosevic... The humor was solid, with a few laughs here and there, but not overly emphasized.

The beginning of the film was done correctly, introducing us to the characters, the appearance of the world and community, and a gradual introduction to the mystery, while everything starts to heat up at halftime. As for the design of the world and the appearance of Belgrade 2077, there were many creative and interesting concepts of the future, a lot of famous buildings in Belgrade were shown in a modernized or untouched state. I particularly liked how people buy burek in a small bakery like a kiosk, flying cars, buses, an anti-gravity club where they drink floating drinks, that hoverboard sport, the installation of illegal chips... I think that cyberpunk world wasn't utilized to its fullest potential (considering I didn't see any laser guns), but given that the action is set in Serbia, probably in that time technology would be lagging compared to other countries, so I have no complaints here.

If the story hadn't fascinated me as much as it did, but not on a 10/10 level, I would give this film a 6 or maybe even a 5, because they really embarrassed themselves with the animation, editing, and mistakes on an unforgivable level. It's evident that Serbia is still inexperienced in the field of animation and is about 80 years behind America.

This is an emotional drama about life, love, friendship, parenting, symbiosis, sacrifice, and death. It has action, it has bonds between friends, it has some little gags poking fun at family life in general. It tries to show that we're all human, there are no true "villains" just people who think they are right too often, and it subtly questions what it means to be "human" and to be "alive."

This is what animation should be. Americans have this idea that animation is only for children, an idea that's been forced on us for years by narrow minded corporate morons who don't want imagination. For them it's just $. Story doesn't have anything to do with it. That's why we just have the same thing over and over, ad nausium. This movie has it all, great story, great characters, great sound track the list goes on. I will add this to my library, I want to see this over and over.

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.

I first started to watch this movie thinking I would probably waste my time. This in a matter of minutes changed as I saw the superb drawing, really innovative sci-fi ideas, and the plot in general.

It is a complicated movie to understand: you'll probably have to see it more than once. Which, considering how enjoyable it was, will probably happen regardless anyways.

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.

"The new Akira" proclaims the promotional blurb.

No, it's not. It had potential to be, in the end however there is more bad than good:

• premise is sound: the idea of a machine-consciousness physically and mentally growing inside a human host may not be a new idea, it still has a lot of potential tho'. Combining this premise with an imaginative Future-Belgrade is a good idea. It's just not explored in a satisfying manner.

• the visuals are ok. Walking & running animations are a bit dodgy. Lots of neat future-tech ideas, some fine compositional angles. Unfortunately the characters lacked...'character'.

• some cool music passages, tho' mostly the tracks are very generic.

• it wasn't just that the characters' visuals lacked something, they were also written unmemorably. No one really stood out, not even the main character.

• the Serbian voice-actors sound mostly bored. They sound just like how it was recorded: some guy/gal sitting in a booth reading aloud words on a page. I usually prefer to listen to the audio the animation-production came from, but the other problem was that there was far too much dialogue, keeping me too busy reading subs (and I'm a quick reader too). The other issue was switching to an audio-language I understand - in this case German - degraded the soundtrack-quality: music was pitched-up - like a PAL DVD is, except this was a bluray - and sounded thinner, less beefy.

• the other problem with too-much-dialogue is that the story becomes tell-don't-show...exposition after exposition...it frankly got a little boring. The characters barely ever stopped talking. The only times they were quiet is whenever we got a short action scene with that generic music blaring. Problem there was the action was hectic, nothing to really follow. Very style-over-substance.

• quite a few scene-transitions are clumsy...suddenly the characters would be in a completely different place, it didn't feel like a natural transition.

• the odd bit of nudity is gratuitous.

• the ending is abrupt & unsatisfying.

Overall not much to recommend it other than the occasional visual feast of a possible Future-Belgrade.

To end on a somewhat positive note: i prefer it to the last animation I watched: Advent Children! Technotise at least showed glimpses of promise.

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.