The Aerial

The Aerial (La Antena, 2007) is an Argentine dystopian fantasy you can watch online on iFILM. An entire city has lost its voice — its people read lips, eat the same food every day and stare endlessly at their screens.

The voices were stolen by Mr. TV, owner of the city's only channel, whose power rests on exactly this silent obedience. Now he wants more than voices: he means to take words themselves. The only hope is a singer known simply as The Voice, the last person who can still speak, and her young son. From that premise Esteban Sapir builds an almost fairy-tale story about freedom and control.

Sapir shoots it as a silent film: black-and-white images, intertitles that physically move through the frame, nods to German expressionism and the trick cinema of the silent era. Spoken words float in the air, turn into objects, fall like snow. There is nothing else that looks quite like it. It won't suit every taste, but for anyone drawn to bold form and parables about a screen-fed society, it earns the time. Stream The Aerial online on iFILM.