‘Arco’ Review: Natalie Portman Produces an Oscar-Nominated Animated Vision of the Future

Given how urgent and severe the climate crisis is, it’s striking how rarely adult-oriented cinema tackles the subject head-on. Paradoxically—or perhaps not—animated films have been far more willing to imagine what humanity’s future might look like if Earth continues on its path toward environmental collapse. Recent titles such as Flow, Sauvages, and The Wild Robot have explored these ideas, taking advantage of animation’s creative freedom. Now comes Arco, the French animated feature nominated for an Oscar, which engages with the issue even more directly.

Directed by French illustrator Ugo Bienvenu and produced, among others, by Natalie Portman, Arco adopts an aesthetic that recalls Japanese anime—especially the work of Hayao Miyazaki—to tell a science-fiction story built around complex time travel and a childhood friendship. Arco (voiced in French by Oscar Tresanini) is a ten-year-old boy living in the 30th century, a time when humans have survived by inhabiting aerial structures—platforms suspended among the clouds, each with its own microclimate. In this future, rainbow-colored cloaks allow people to travel through time and study the world as it once was. Children, however, are forbidden from using them until they turn twelve. Arco can’t—and won’t—wait.

While his family sleeps, suspended in midair, Arco steals one of the cloaks and sets off on his own. Lacking proper control of the technology, he accidentally lands in the year 2075, where he is discovered by Iris (Margot Ringard Oldra), a girl his age. This not-so-distant future looks uncomfortably close to our present: robots handle most everyday tasks, people communicate via vivid holograms, and even supermarkets still exist—though purchases are limited to five identical items per person, a response to food hoarding brought on by climate-related disasters. The situation is so dire that transparent geodesic domes have been developed to shield homes and families from extreme weather. And all signs point to an impending, devastating fire.

Amid this scenario, Iris, her robot Mikki, and her younger brother take in Arco, who has lost the diamond that powers his ability to fly and must recover it to return home. That won’t be easy: the object has fallen into the hands of three dim-witted brothers (voiced in the original by Louis Garrel, Vincent Macaigne, and William Lebghil; in English by Will Ferrell, Andy Samberg, and Flea), who want to use it to prove that time travel really exists. As Arco and Iris try to solve the problem, a paradoxical situation unfolds: the closer they grow as friends, the more urgent it becomes for Arco to leave. To complicate matters further, yet another climate catastrophe—this time a massive forest fire—erupts, raising the stakes even higher.

In a straightforward, accessible way, Arco builds its narrative around the bond between these two children to reflect on the future of humanity and the planet. While the time-travel paradoxes may cause some confusion for younger viewers, they follow a logic not unlike that of Back to the Future, a film to which Arco is more closely connected than it might initially seem.

In the world of 2075, nearly all work is done by robots, which are omnipresent. Mikki, the robot who runs Iris’s household (voiced in French by Alma Jodorowsky and Swann Arlaud, and in English by Natalie Portman and Mark Ruffalo), keeps everything in order while the parents are away, appearing only as holograms. Rather than portraying technology as a threat, the film presents Mikki as a figure torn between the rigid demands of his programming—he malfunctions when he encounters Arco, whom his system cannot identify—and a genuine protective instinct toward Iris and her family.

As Arco and Iris embark on their adventures (their names, at least in Spanish, are telling, almost symbolic), the film incorporates familiar elements of children’s cinema: chases, narrow escapes, comic relief provided by the trio of bumbling pursuers, and moments of confusion. At its core, though, Arco is a dense yet hopeful, deeply humanist story about what new generations might still be able to do to change the fate of a world that seems headed for disaster.

The elegant 2D animation leans slightly more toward realism than Miyazaki’s work—particularly in scenes set in supermarkets or urban spaces—but it also embraces more overtly “psychedelic” visual flourishes when the friends soar through the air on the rainbow-colored cloak. Despite a slight dip in dramatic tension midway through, Arco regains its emotional depth and subtlety by the time it reaches its moving, intelligent finale. Suitable for children and quietly resonant for nostalgic adults, the film ultimately suggests that family ties and friendships may be the forces capable of saving the world.