MARS EXPRESS

Aline is a hard-bitten private detective with a drinking problem; her buddy Carlos is actually a collection of data scraped from a soldier who died in battle, reassigned to a cyborg’s body. Reluctantly joining forces with Roberta, a rogue hacker, the detectives uncover a fiendish plot to implant robots with code that will turn them savage, leading inevitably to war. Set in a distant future, when Mars is a good neighbourhood and Earth a mere slum, this stylishly animated sci-fi engages with questions that seem ripped from the news – If AI can do everything, what will humans do? Will they turn against us? – laced through an intricate thriller. With more than a whiff of anime, this is hard sci-fi at its otherworldly best.