| Director: | Jérémie Périn |
| Producer: | Didier Creste |
| Editing: | Lila Desiles |
| Distributor: | Gebeka Films |
| Runtime: | 89 minutes |
| Country: | France |
| Language: | French |
| Budget: | €9 million |
| Gross: | $1.5 million[1] |
Mars Express is a 2023 French animated tech-noir film co-written and directed by Jérémie Périn.
In 2200, Aline Ruby, a private detective, and Carlos Rivera, an android replica of her partner who died five years earlier, are sent to Earth to capture Roberta Williams, a robot-hacking criminal. However, back on Mars, Roberta's arrest warrant has disappeared and she is released.
A new investigation is then entrusted to the duo: to track down Jun Chow, a cybernetics student known for illegally jailbreaking androids who, like her roommate, has gone missing. Aline and Carlos will have to venture to the depths of Noctis, the main terrestrial establishment of Mars created thanks to the progress of robotics, and where humans and various forms of androids seem to coexist in harmony.
However, the city hides dark secrets, such as trafficking and clandestine computer labs. Meanwhile, activists try to free the robots from the security constraints that bind them to humans.
Ultimately, the robots are successfully emancipated and revolt, but peacefully, by uploading their consciousnesses to computers aboard spaceships and thus escaping to space. Carlos, grief-stricken by the loss of his partner and realizing that he is a dead consciousness embodied in a machine who has been "trying to hold onto a life that's moved on without him", decides to go with the robots. Through Carlos, we see a being making "the transition from the human perspective [...] to the robot point of view."
Jérémie Périn is a French animator known for the 2016 animated TV series Lastman as well as several "virally popular" and "emphatically NSFW" music videos for electronic dance artists such as DyE and Lionel Flairs. Mars Express was his first feature film.
In an interview, the director said he was inspired by hard-boiled film noir detectives in movies such as Chinatown, The Long Goodbye, Kiss Me Deadly, and Point Blank. Since the protagonists were all men, however, he wanted to see if a woman was put in the role, would there be some differences.
He was also inspired by movies in which the protagonist realizes that they are in a conspiracy that is too big for them, such as Three Days of the Condor, All the President's Men, The Parallax View, Blow Out, and The Conversation.
The inspiration for the organic machines and weapons in the film leads back to the director hearing that Google was working on technology for skin cells. This led to the idea that ultimately tech would complete a full circle back to organics, something "close to us, but at the same time, they are monsters." He also tied the replacement of the robots with organics to planned obsolescence, which he wanted to lampoon.
The film is an Everybody on Deck production. It had a €9 million budget.[2]
The film premiered in the Cinéma de la Plage section of the 76th Cannes Film Festival on 23 May 2023.[3] It also made it to the competitive slate of the Annecy International Animation Film Festival.[4] It was released theatrically in France on 22 November 2023 by Gebeka Films.[5] [6] GKIDS acquired the film's North American rights and released it on 3 May 2024 with both its original French language and an English dub.[7] [8]
The film is set to be released by GKIDS in North America on both digital and Blu-ray formats on 18 June 2024.[9]
Rafael Motamayor of /Film rated the film 8 out of 10 points, writing it "works because even its most outlandish and complex sci-fi concept is grounded in human drama".[10]
Wendy Ide of Screen Daily deemed the film to be "striking and timely animation".[11]
Toussaint Egan of Polygon called the film "the best animated movie of the year you probably haven't seen or heard about yet."[12]
| Award | Date of ceremony | Category | Recipient(s) | Result | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lumières Award | 22 January 2024 | Best Animated Film | Mars Express | ||
| Paris Film Critics Association Awards | 4 February 2024 | Best Animated Film | |||
| International Cinephile Society | 11 February 2024 | Best Animated Film | |||
| César Awards | 23 February 2024 | Best Animated Film |