Children of Men
Children of Men poster
Directed by	Alfonso Cuarón
Produced by	Marc Abraham Eric Newman Iain Smith Hilary Shor Tony Smith Thomas A. Bliss Armyan Bernstein
Written by	Novel: P.D. James Screenplay: Alfonso Cuarón Timothy J. Sexton David Arata Mark Fergus Hawk Ostby
Starring	Clive Owen Julianne Moore Michael Caine Claire-Hope Ashitey Pam Ferris Chiwetel Ejiofor
Music by	John Tavener
Cinematography	Emmanuel Lubezki
Editing by	Alfonso Cuarón Alex Rodríguez
Distributed by	Universal Pictures Strike Entertainment
Release date(s)	September 22, 2006 December 25, 2006
Running time	109 min.
Country	UK
Language	English
Budget	$80 million[1]
Official website
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Children of Men is a 2006 dystopian science fiction film loosely adapted from P.D. James' 1992 novel The Children of Men. The film was directed by Alfonso Cuarón and stars Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Claire-Hope Ashitey, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Michael Caine.

Set in an apocalyptic United Kingdom of 2027, the film explores a grim world in which two decades of global human infertility have left humanity with less than a century to survive. Societal collapse, terrorism, and environmental destruction accompany the impending extinction, with Britain, perhaps the last functioning government, persecuting a seemingly endless wave of illegal immigrant refugees seeking sanctuary. In the midst of this chaos, Theo Faron (Clive Owen) must find safe transit for Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey), a pregnant African refugee.^[2]

The film was released on September 22, 2006 in the UK and on December 25 in the US, with critics noting the relationship between the Christmas opening and the film's themes of hope, redemption, and faith. Described as a companion piece to Cuarón's Y tu mamá también (2001), both films examine contemporary social and political issues through the epic journey of the road film.

Children of Men was recognized for its achievements in screenwriting, cinematography, art direction, and innovative single-shot action sequences, receiving three Academy Award nominations and winning two BAFTA awards.

Plot summary

It is 2027; Britain has become an armed camp, and soldiers patrol the streets, rounding up illegal immigrants into cages. Televised reports announce that the youngest person on the planet — and the last human child to have been born — has been murdered at the age of eighteen in Argentina for refusing to sign an autograph. Theo Faron (Clive Owen), a former political activist turned bureaucrat, appears apathetic; the rest of London mourns.

As Theo leaves a café, a bomb explodes. The government blames the attack on the "Fishes", a terrorist group that supports immigrant rights. Shaken, Theo visits his friend, Jasper Palmer (Michael Caine), a former political cartoonist living in the countryside, who spends his time growing cannabis and caring for his catatonic wife, a former war photographer tortured by the government.

Upon his return to London, Theo is kidnapped by the Fishes, who are led by his estranged wife Julian Taylor (Julianne Moore). (Dylan, their young son, died during the flu pandemic of 2008.) Julian offers Theo £5,000 in exchange for a travel permit for a young African "fugee" (refugee) girl named Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey). Initially ambivalent, Theo decides to obtain the permits. He visits his cousin Nigel (Danny Huston), a government minister and curator of a repository for rescued art, who arranges for the papers, with the stipulation that Theo must accompany Kee.

The trip begins, and Luke (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a member of The Fishes, drives Theo, Kee, Julian, and Miriam (Pam Ferris), a midwife, toward the first security checkpoint. They are ambushed before they arrive, and Julian is fatally shot in the neck. The police soon follow, and Theo (who is mourning for Julian), Luke, Kee, and Miriam escape to a safe house. With Julian dead, Luke is appointed the new leader of the Fishes.

Kee reveals to Theo that she is pregnant with the first child in nearly two decades. Julian had intended to take Kee to the Human Project, a mysterious group of scientists dedicated to curing infertility. Kee tells Theo that Julian told her that she should only trust Theo. With Julian dead, however, Luke proposes keeping Kee with the Fishes, and she chooses to stay until after the baby is born. Theo wishes to go public, but the Fishes argue that Kee's baby will be taken by the government and used for its benefit.

Just before dawn, Theo awakens to overhear Luke state that he staged the ambush to assassinate Julian, so that the Fishes would be able to use Kee's baby as a political tool. Theo escapes with Kee and Miriam to Jasper's house — with the Fishes in pursuit. At Jasper's, Miriam explains that the rendezvous with the Human Project's ship Tomorrow is scheduled at a buoy offshore from the Bexhill refugee camp. Jasper proposes a plan to smuggle them into the camp with the help of his friend and customer Syd, a guard at Bexhill.

After the Fishes discover Jasper's hideout, Theo, Miriam, and Kee escape with Jasper's help. Realizing his fate is now sealed, Jasper euthanizes his wife and dog. He refuses to tell Luke where Theo, Miriam, and Kee are, and is killed. Theo and the group meet Syd (Peter Mullan) at an abandoned school, and he drives them to Bexhill as faux-prisoners. When Kee begins having contractions while they are loaded onto a refugee bus and taken into the camp, Miriam distracts a suspicious guard from noticing Kee's condition by faking religious mania, and is dragged off the bus into detention.

Theo and Kee enter Bexhill, a small gated town filled with crumbling apartment buildings and strewn with garbage. Here they meet Syd's contact, Marichka, a Gypsy from Romania. She provides them with a room where Kee gives birth to a girl. The next morning, the Fishes break into Bexhill, attempting to capture Kee and her baby and start a refugee uprising. A camp uprising gains momentum, and the British Army moves in to quell the rebellion.

After Syd reappears and attempts to kidnap Theo and Kee to collect a bounty, they manage to fight him off and escape. The Fishes recapture Kee, but in the chaos they are separated. Theo tracks Kee and her baby to a besieged apartment building, and frees them, but Luke shoots Theo as they make their escape. Luke is then shot to death by a tank. When the soldiers and the armed insurgents hear the baby crying, the fighting stops and the combatants look on in awe. Theo, Kee, and the baby leave the building in safety, walking past the astonished soldiers.

As the fighting resumes, the three rejoin Marichka and make their way to a small boat, and Theo rows Kee and her baby out to the buoy that marks the rendezvous point. After military jets pass overhead, the sky glows, as Bexhill is bombed. Kee sees blood in the boat, and Theo admits that he was shot during their escape. Kee then says she will name her baby Dylan, and Theo gives a weak smile before slumping to the side of the boat. Then the Tomorrow emerges from the thick fog.

Cast

• Clive Owen as Theo Faron, a former activist whose child died during a flu pandemic.^[3] He distracts himself from thinking about the impending extinction of humanity with a bottle of Scotch whisky he keeps in the pocket of his jacket.^[4] Theo returns to the world of politics when his ex-wife Julian, now leader of an insurgent group called the Fishes, asks him to transport a young refugee to safety.^[3] Theo is the "archetypal everyman" who unwillingly becomes a saviour.^{[5] [6]} Cast in April 2005,^[7] Owen spent several weeks collaborating with Cuarón and Sexton about his role. Impressed by Owen's creative insights, Cuarón and Sexton brought him on board as a writer.^[8] Back-story developing Theo's character was removed during the editing process: a scene showing Theo stealing petrol vouchers from work was cut to emphasize visual over verbal information. "Clive was a big help," Cuarón told Variety. "I would send a group of scenes to him, and then I would hear his feedback and instincts."^[9]
• Julianne Moore as Julian Taylor, a political activist and leader of the militant "Fishes" group. Julian is also Theo's former wife and mother to Theo's deceased child. For Julian, Cuarón wanted an actor who had the "credibility of leadership, intelligence, [and] independence".^[8] Moore was cast in June 2005.^[10] "She is just so much fun to work with," Cuarón told Cinematical. "She is just pulling the rug out from under your feet all the time. You don't know where to stand, because she is going to make fun of you."^[8]
• Michael Caine as Jasper Palmer, Theo's friend, a retired editorial cartoonist and neo-hippie who grows and smokes cannabis that he also smuggles to Bexhill refugee internment camp. Caine based Jasper on his personal experiences with friend John Lennon;^[8] it was the first time he had portrayed a character who would pass gas or smoke cannabis.^[11] Cuarón explains, "Once he had the clothes and so on and stepped in front of the mirror to look at himself, his body language started changing. Michael loved it. He believed he was this guy".^[11] Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune notices an apparent homage to Schwartz (Mort Mills) in Orson Welles' film noir, Touch of Evil (1958). Jasper calls Theo "amigo" -- just as Schwartz referred to Ramon Miguel Vargas (Charlton Heston).^[12]
• Claire-Hope Ashitey as Kee, a character who did not appear in the book. The role of an African illegal immigrant was written into the film, based on Cuarón's opinion of the recent single-origin hypothesis of human origins and the status of dispossessed people:^[13] "The fact that this child will be the child of an African woman has to do with the fact that humanity started in Africa. We're putting the future of humanity in the hands of the dispossessed and creating a new humanity to spring out of that."^[14]
• Chiwetel Ejiofor as Luke, the replacement leader of the resistance movement.

Themes

Hope

Children of Men explores the theme of hope and faith^[15] in the face of overwhelming futility and despair.^[16][17] The film's source, the novel The Children of Men by P. D. James, describes what happens when society is unable to reproduce, using male infertility to explain this problem.^[18][19] In the novel, it is made clear that hope depends on future generations. James writes, "It was reasonable to struggle, to suffer, perhaps even to die, for a more just, a more compassionate society, but not in a world with no future where, all too soon, the very words 'justice,' 'compassion,' 'society,’ 'struggle,' 'evil,' would be unheard echoes on an empty air."^[20]

The film switches the infertility from male to female^[17] but never explains its cause: environmental destruction and divine punishment are considered.^[21] This unanswered question (and others in the film) have been attributed to Cuarón's dislike for expository film: "There's a kind of cinema I detest, which is a cinema that is about exposition and explanations.... It's become now what I call a medium for lazy readers.... Cinema is a hostage of narrative. And I'm very good at narrative as a hostage of cinema."^[22] Cuaron's disdain for back-story and exposition led him to use the concept of female infertility as a "metaphor for the fading sense of hope".^[17] The "almost mythical" Human Project, with their goal of creating a new world,^[23] is turned into a "metaphor for the possibility of the evolution of the human spirit, the evolution of human understanding."^[24] Without dictating how the audience should feel by the end of the film, Cuarón encourages viewers to come to their own conclusions about the sense of hope depicted in the final scenes: "We wanted the end to be a glimpse of a possibility of hope, for the audience to invest their own sense of hope into that ending. So if you're a hopeful person you'll see a lot of hope, and if you're a bleak person you'll see a complete hopelessness at the end."^[25]

Contemporary references

Children of Men takes an unconventional approach to the modern action film, using documentary, newsreel style to convey what critic Michael Joshua Rowin describes as "stunning verisimilitude within its mise-en-scène." For Rowin, the film alludes to and resonates with the catastrophic destruction and symbolism of the September 11, 2001 attacks.^[26]

Rowin, along with film critics Jason Guerrasio and Ethan Alter, observe the film's underlying touchstone of immigration; Alter notes that the film "makes a potent case against the anti-immigrant sentiment" popular in modern societies like the United Kingdom, and the United States, with Guerrasio describing the film as "a complex meditation on the politics of today".^[25][27]

For Alter and other critics, the structural support and impetus for the contemporary references rests upon the visual nature of the film's exposition, occurring in the form of imagery as opposed to conventional dialogue.^[27] Visually, the refugee camps in the film intentionally evoke Abu Ghraib prison, Guantánamo Bay detainment camp, and The Maze.^[24] Other popular images appear, such as a prisoner in a pose resembling the photograph of Satar Jabar in the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal, and a sign over the refugee camp reading "Homeland Security".^[28] The similarity between the hellish, cinéma vérité stylized battle scenes of the film and current news and documentary coverage of the Iraq War, is noted by film critic Manohla Dargis, describing Cuarón's fictional landscapes as "war zones of extraordinary plausibility".^[29]

In the film, refugees are "hunted down like cockroaches," rounded up and put into cages and camps, and even shot, leading film critics like Chris Smith and Claudia Puig to observe symbolic "overtones" and images of The Holocaust.^[30][16] This theme is reinforced in the scene where an elderly refugee woman speaking German is seen detained in a cage,^[2] and in the scene where British Homeland Security strips and beats illegal immigrants, a song by The Libertines, "Arbeit Macht Frei", plays in the background.^[31] "The visual allusions to the Nazi roundups are unnerving," writes Richard A. Blake. "It shows what people can become when the government orchestrates their fears for its own advantage."^[4]

Cuarón explains how he uses this imagery to propagate the theme by cross-referencing fictional and futuristic events with real, contemporary, or historical incidents and beliefs:

Myth and religion

Described as a "companion piece" to Cuarón's Y tu mamá también (2001), Children of Men is also a road movie. Like Virgil's Aeneid, Dante's Divine Comedy, and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the crux of the journey in Children of Men lies in what is uncovered along the path rather than the terminus itself.^[4] Theo's heroic journey across the UK mirrors his personal quest for "self-awareness",^[27] a journey that takes Theo from "despair to hope".^[32]

According to Cuarón, the title of P.D. James' book (The Children of Men) is a Catholic allegory derived from a passage of scripture in the Bible.^[33] (Psalm 90(89):3 of the KJV: "Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men."^[34]) James refers to her story as a "Christian fable"^[18] while Cuarón describes it as "almost like a look at Christianity": "I didn't want to shy away from the spiritual archetypes," Cuarón told Filmmaker Magazine. "But I wasn't interested in dealing with Dogma."^[25]

The film has been noted for its use of Christian symbolism; for example, British terrorists named "Fishes" protect the rights of refugees.^[35] Opening on Christmas Day in the United States, critics compared the characters of Theo and Kee with Joseph and Mary,^[36] calling the film a "modern-day Nativity story":^[37] Kee's pregnancy is revealed to Theo in a barn, alluding to the manger of the Nativity scene, and when other characters discover Kee and her baby, they respond with "Jesus Christ" or the sign of the cross.^[38]

To highlight these spiritual themes, Cuarón commissioned a 15-minute piece by British composer John Tavener, an Orthodox Christian whose work resonates with the themes of "motherhood, birth, rebirth, and redemption in the eyes of God." Calling his score a "musical and spiritual reaction to Alfonso's film", snippets of Tavener's "Fragments of a Prayer" contain lyrics in Latin, German and Sanskrit sung by a mezzo-soprano. Words like "mata" (mother), "pahi mam" (protect me), "avatara" (saviour), and "alleluia" appear throughout the film.^[39][40]

Following the last scenes and the credits, a Hindu prayer for peace in Sanskrit, "Shantih Shantih Shantih", is shown. These words are also used at the end of an Upanishad and in the final line of T.S. Eliot's poem, The Waste Land.^[41]

Production

The adaptation of the P.D. James novel was originally written by Paul Chart, and later rewritten by Mark Fergus and Hawk Otsby. Developed by producers Marc Abraham, Eric Newman, Hilary Shor and Tony Smith, Beacon Pictures brought director Alfonso Cuarón on board in 2001.^[42] Cuarón and screenwriter Timothy J. Sexton began rewriting the script after the director completed Y tu mamá también (2001). Afraid he would "start second guessing things"^[11] Cuarón chose not to read P.D. James' novel, opting to have Sexton read the book while Cuarón himself read an abridged version.^[25][8] Cuarón did not immediately begin production, instead directing Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004). The director's work experience in the United Kingdom exposed him to the "social dynamics of the British psyche", giving him insight into the depiction of "British reality".^[43] Cuarón used the film The Battle of Algiers (1967) as a model for social reconstruction in preparation for production, presenting the film to Clive Owen as an example of his vision for Children of Men. In order to create a philosophical and social framework for the film, the director read literature by Slavoj Žižek, as well as similar works.^[44] The film Sunrise (1927) was also influential.^[17]

Location

The look and feel of the film A Clockwork Orange (1971) helped contribute to the futuristic, yet battered patina of 2027 London.^[17] Children of Men was the second film Cuarón had made in London, with the director portraying the city as a character itself, shooting single, wide shots of the city.^[45] While Cuarón was preparing the film, the London bombings occurred, but the director never considered moving the production. "It would have been impossible to shoot anywhere but London, because of the very obvious way the locations were incorporated into the film," Cuarón told Variety. "For example, the shot of Fleet Street looking toward St. Paul's would have been impossible to shoot anywhere else."^[45] Due to these circumstances, the opening terrorist attack scene on Fleet Street was shot one-and-a-half months after the London bombing.^[44]

Cuarón chose to shoot some scenes in East London, a location he considered "a place without glamour". The set locations were dressed to make them appear even more run down; Cuarón says he told the crew "'Let's make it more Mexican'. In other words, we'd look at a location and then say: yes, but in Mexico there would be this and this. It was about making the place look rundown. It was about poverty."^[44] He also made use of London's most popular sites, shooting in locations like Trafalgar Square and Battersea Power Station. The power station scene (whose conversion into an art archive is a reference to the Tate Modern), has been compared to Antonioni's Red Desert (1964).^[46] Cuarón added a pig balloon to the scene as homage to Pink Floyd's Animals.^[47] Other art works visible in this scene include Michaelangelo's David,^[4] Picasso's Guernica,[1] and Banksy's British Cops Kissing.^[2] London visual effects companies Double Negative and Framestore worked directly with Cuarón from script to post production, developing effects and creating "environments and shots that wouldn't otherwise be possible".^[45]

Style and design

"In most sci-fi epics, special effects substitute for story. Here they seamlessly advance it," observes Colin Covert of Star Tribune.^[48] Billboards were designed to balance a contemporary and futuristic appearance, and cars were made to resemble modern ones at first glance, although a closer look made them seem unfamiliar.^[49] Cuarón informed the art department that the film was the "anti-Blade Runner",^[50] rejecting technologically advanced proposals and downplaying the science fiction elements of the 2027 setting. The director focused on images reflecting the contemporary period,^[51] choosing to have innovative technology in the film's timeline discontinued by 2014. With the future in mind, Cuarón maintained a steady gaze on the present: "We didn't want to be distracted by the future. We didn't want to transport the audience into another reality."^[52]

Single-shot sequences

Children of Men used several lengthy single-shot sequences in which extremely complex actions take place. The longest of these are a shot in which Kee gives birth (199 seconds); a roadside ambush on a country road (247 seconds); and a scene in which Theo is captured by the Fishes, escapes, and runs down a street and through a building in the middle of a raging battle (454 seconds). These sequences were extremely difficult to film, although the effect of continuity is sometimes an illusion, aided by CGI effects.

Cuarón had already experimented with long takes in Y tu mamá también and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. His style is influenced by the Swiss film Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 (1976), a favorite of Cuarón's. Cuarón reminisces: "I was studying cinema when I first saw [Jonah], and interested in the French New Wave. Jonah was so unflashy compared to those films. The camera keeps a certain distance and there are relatively few close-ups. It's elegant and flowing, constantly tracking, but very slowly and not calling attention to itself."^[53]

The creation of the single-shot sequences was a challenging, time-consuming process that sparked concerns from the studio. It took fourteen days to prepare for the single take in which Clive Owen's character searches a building under attack, and five hours for every time they wanted to reshoot it. The take that appears in the film ends with blood splattered onto the lens, which cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki convinced the director to leave in. According to Owen, "Right in the thick of it are me and the camera operator because we're doing this very complicated, very specific dance which, when we come to shoot, we have to make feel completely random."^[54]

Cuarón's initial idea for maintaining continuity during the roadside ambush scene was dismissed by production experts as an "impossible shot to do". Fresh from the visual effects-laden Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Cuarón suggested using computer-generated imagery to film the scene. Lubezki refused to allow it, reminding the director that they had intended to make a film akin to a "raw documentary". Instead, a special camera rig invented by Doggicam Systems was employed, allowing Cuarón to develop the scene as one extended take.^[25][12][55] A vehicle was modified to enable seats to tilt and lower actors out of the way of the camera, and the windshield was designed to tilt out of the way to allow camera movement in and out through the front windscreen. A crew of four, including the DP and camera operator, rode on the roof.

However, the commonly reported statement that the action scenes are continuous shots^[56] is not entirely true. Visual effects supervisor Frazer Churchill has indicated that the battle sequence was filmed in five separate takes over two locations and then seamlessly stitched together to give the illusion of a single take. Similarly, the car sequence was filmed in six separate takes over three locations and then stitched together, along with various other CG elements including a CG roof.^[57] In an interview with Variety, Cuarón acknowledged this nature of the "single-shot" action sequences: "Maybe I'm spilling a big secret, but sometimes it's more than what it looks like. The important thing is how you blend everything and how you keep the perception of a fluid choreography through all of these different pieces."^[9]

Tim Webber of VFX house Framestore CFC was responsible for the three-and-a-half minute single take of Kee giving birth, helping to choreograph and create the CG effects of the childbirth.^[45] Cuarón had originally intended to use an animatronic baby as Kee's child with the exception of the childbirth scene. In the end, two takes were shot, with the second take concealing Claire-Hope Ashitey's legs, replacing them with prosthetic legs. Cuarón was pleased with the results of the effect, and returned to previous shots of the baby in animatronic form, replacing them with Framestore's computer-generated baby.^[57]

Music

Main article: Children of Men (soundtracks)

There were two soundtracks released for the film, one with various popular music, the other with an actual film score. Four songs that are heard in the film are not included on the soundtrack. "Map of the Problematique" by Muse and "Hoppípolla" by Sigur Rós were previously featured in TV spots and trailers but were not used in the film. The film's score was composed by John Tavener and includes work by other classical composers, such as George Frideric Handel, Gustav Mahler, and Krzysztof Penderecki. British pop music dominates the first half of the film, including a cover version of The Rolling Stones' "Ruby Tuesday," King Crimson's "The Court of the Crimson King", Radiohead's "Life in a Glasshouse", and John Lennon's "Bring on the Lucie (Freeda People)".

Release

Children of Men held its world premiere at the 63rd Venice International Film Festival on September 3, 2006.^[58] On September 22, 2006, Children of Men debuted at #1 in the United Kingdom with $2.4 million in 368 screens.^[59] The film debuted in a limited release in the United States on December 22, 2006 in 16 theaters, expanding the number of theaters to over 1,200 on January 5, 2007.^[60] As of June 17, 2007, Children of Men grossed $69,217,002 worldwide, with $35,327,768 of the revenue generated in the United States.^[61]

Critical reception

According to the review tallying website Rotten Tomatoes, Children of Men received a 91% overall approval out of 176 reviews from critics,^[62] and on Metacritic, the film has a rating of 84 based on 36 reviews.^[63] Dana Stevens of Slate Magazine called the film "the herald of another blessed event: the arrival of a great director by the name of Alfonso Cuarón." Stevens hailed the film's extended car chase and battle scenes as "two of the most virtuoso single-shot chase sequences I've ever seen."^[64] Manohla Dargis of The New York Times called the film a "superbly directed political thriller", raining accolades on the long chase scenes.^[29] "Easily one of the best films of the year" said Ethan Alter of Film Journal International, with scenes that "dazzle you with their technical complexity and visual virtuosity."^[27] Jonathan Romney of The Independent praised the accuracy of Cuarón's portrait of Britain, but he criticized some of the film's futuristic scenes as "run-of-the-mill future fantasy."^[2] Film Comment's Critics' Poll of the best films of 2006 ranked the film #19 while the 2006 Readers' Poll ranked it #2.^[65] On their list of the best movies of 2006, The Onion, the San Francisco Chronicle, Slate Magazine and The Washington Post placed the film at number-one.^[66]

Awards

P.D. James and the screenwriters of Children of Men were awarded the 19th annual USC Scripter Award for the screen adaptation of the novel; Howard Rodman, chair of the USC School of Cinematic Arts Writing Division, described the book-to-screen adaptation as "writing and screen writing of the highest order."^[67] The film was also nominated in the category of Best Adapted Screenplay at the 79th Academy Awards.

Children of Men also obtained Academy Award nominations for Best Cinematography (Emmanuel Lubezki) and Best Film Editing (Alfonso Cuarón and Alex Rodríguez).^[68] The British Academy of Film and Television Arts nominated Children of Men for Best Visual Effects and honored the film with awards for Best Cinematography and Best Production Design at the 60th British Academy Film Awards. Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki won the feature film award for Best Cinematography at the 21st American Society of Cinematographers Awards. The Australian Cinematographers Society also awarded Lubezki the 2007 International Award for Cinematography for Children of Men.^[69]

The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films bestowed the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film on Children of Men, and the film is currently a Nippon 2007 Hugo Nominee in the category of Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form, to be awarded at the upcoming 65th World Science Fiction Convention.^[70]

DVD

The DVD was released in Europe on January 15, 2007^[71] and in the United States on March 27, 2007. Extras include a half-hour documentary by director Alfonso Cuarón entitled "The Possibility of Hope". The documentary explores the intersection between the film's themes and reality with a critical analysis by eminent scholars: the Slovenian sociologist and philosopher Slavoj Žižek , anti-globalization activist Naomi Klein, futurist James Lovelock, sociologist Saskia Sassen, human geographer Fabrizio Eva, cultural theorist Tzvetan Todorov, and philosopher and economist John N. Gray; "Under Attack" features a demonstration of the innovative techniques required for the car chase and battle scenes; Clive Owen and Julianne Moore discuss their characters in "Theo & Julian"; "Futuristic Design" opens the door on the production design and look of the film; "Visual Effects" shows how the digital baby was created. Deleted scenes are included.^[72] The film is also available in a HD-DVD/DVD combo package.

Notes and references