Entertainment
Explore how dystopian cinema has become an unsettling mirror to the political and social turmoil in the US, particularly in the wake of recent events. Discover how these cinematic narratives offer not just reflections of our fears, but also inspire hope and resistance in the face of an uncertain future.
Updated 06:22 pm EDT, July 27, 2025
Published 09:00 am EDT, August 11, 2025
Image Researcher: Vera Tabunova
Cinema Reflects US Politics
Sales of dystopian books about tyranny, totalitarianism, and feminism surged after Donald Trump won a second term. The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood’s acclaimed novel about a society where the few remaining fertile women are forced into sexual slavery, shot up 400 spots on bestseller lists.
As Spanish writer Marilò Álvarez puts it, science fiction “holds up a mirror to our reality and lets us reflect on whether we’re headed toward the future we actually want. It doesn’t predict—it reflects.” So, it shouldn’t shock us, then, that in times of turmoil and uncertainty, audiences search for these types of stories. We look for the answers—or, if nothing else, a how-to manual for survival.
When, in 2022, the U. S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, the 1973 court decision that recognized abortion as a constitutional right, many women started to feel like the fictional Republic of Gilead Margaret Atwood once described might not be such an outrageous possibility. After all, by leaving abortion legislation up to the states, the controversial court decision effectively greenlit the restricting, stigmatizing, or complete denial of access to voluntary pregnancy termination for millions of Americans.
And now, in Trump’s second term, his administration’s policies have already made headlines that read like April Fools’ jokes. It’s like something out of Good Bye, Lenin!, a German film where a young man hides the fall of the Berlin Wall from his communist mother who’s just come up from a coma. If someone were to wake up today after years asleep, they might not even recognize a country where its most basic foundations are suddenly up for debate.
We didn’t exactly see that coming, did we? Is there anything more dystopian than the sight of the 2021 attack on the Capitol when enraged patriots in absurd costumes (give the guy in the Viking helmet a gold star) were waving Confederate flags? This insurrection, incited by a Trump who refused to accept Biden’s electoral victory, gave a shameful image of a nation that nevertheless rewarded one of its instigators with a second term in the White House. Seeing is believing.
The same deep political and social divisions running through American society are at the center of Civil War (Alex Garland, 2024), one of the latest dystopian films. The film envisions a war fought with firearms between the federal government and states with secessionist inclinations—the “Western Forces” (a California and Texas alliance)—casting a potent red warning on the consequences of current political tensions if they get out of hand.
As with Civil War, many science-fiction films that fit this category go beyond sheer entertainment. They embody the fears and issues of their release period; they are reflective and cautionary. They signal the perils that may not be as remote as we might like to believe. The future depicted in these films is already with us.
Set in 2017, Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men presents an apocalyptic world where humanity faces extinction due to global infertility, which has plagued the planet for 18 years. The U.K., overwhelmed by asylum seekers and on the verge of social collapse, has become a hyper-surveilled regime where undocumented immigrants are abused and packed into concentration camps, while terrorist attacks are the norm.
Amid the chaos—brought vividly to life through Emmanuel Lubezki’s stunning cinematography and a series of breathtaking long takes—Theo, a disillusioned government worker played by Clive Owen, agrees (in exchange for a hefty payout) to help a resistance group smuggle Kee, a pregnant refugee and the only known hope for humankind, to safety.
Though the film—loosely based on a novel by P.D. James—was inspired by post-9/11 xenophobia and can be interpreted as an early warning about Brexit, its themes also feel deeply relevant to today’s political climate in the U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids across various parts of Los Angeles have sparked protests and clashes between federal agents and demonstrators in the city center, creating a tense scene that feels like a deleted sequence from Children of Men. Cracking down on immigration was already one of Trump’s priorities during his first term (who can forget the infamous border wall between the U.S. and Mexico?), but with his return to power, he has intensified his war on migrants.
Hundreds of thousands of refugees, mostly Venezuelans, have become more vulnerable to possible deportation after the president rescinded Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which allowed people already in the U.S. to live and work legally because their home countries are considered highly unsafe. Likewise, the Trump administration has made use of CECOT—a maximum-security prison in El Salvador widely criticized by human rights organizations—to send immigrants with criminal records, citing the Alien Enemies Act, a law that dates to the 18th century.
Dystopian cinema doesn’t paint a rosy picture for the underprivileged—and the data backs it up. After the COVID-19 pandemic, the ultra-wealthy came out even richer, while working-class and low-income communities lost even more ground. In a future where new deadly virus outbreaks and increasingly intense natural disasters seem inevitable, the gap between rich and poor is only expected to widen—and access to healthcare will be a matter of life and death. Two films capture this issue with chilling accuracy.
In In Time (Andrew Niccol, 2011), people no longer age after the age of 25, and time has become the new international currency: everybody pays for everything with time, including their lives. The rich are immortal and can do what they want. The poor are forced to work every day just to be able to buy the time to stay alive.
In Elysium (2013, Neill Blomkamp), the rich live on a space station which is their personal paradise, and they can easily get from machines any illness cured, even getting de-aged. The poor, who are mostly workers and rejects, live on an Earth full of filth and mostly don’t have access to even basic health care.
As real life starts to mirror fiction, Trump seems eager to play the movie villain. His “big and beautiful” plan to fund tax breaks for the ultra-rich would slash Medicaid—which helps low-income Americans access healthcare—and cut SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), putting millions of children at risk, especially in Latino and historically marginalized communities. Let’s be honest. When Trump picked Elon Musk—the richest man in the world—as a government advisor, no one expected a Robin Hood routine. But few saw it coming when the two ended up feuding online in a bizarre, meme-worthy remake of Alien vs. Predator. And yes, the film tagline still applies: “Whoever wins… we lose.”
In Don’t Look Up, a dark satire from Adam McKay (1989-2021) in 2021, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence play scientists who discover that a comet is on a collision course with Earth. Instead of galvanizing action, their warnings are ignored and mocked by politicians and the media. The film is a satire of anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, and climate change deniers, among other targets, in a world where science is subordinated to politics, profit, and entertainment.
Sound familiar? Meryl Streep’s character, a populist president who ignores experts and prioritizes polling numbers over people, is clearly a stand-in for Trump. One of his first moves in office was to pull the U.S. out of the WHO, the Paris Climate Agreement, and other key environmental accords. He also filled top government positions with prominent science deniers.
Oppression of knowledge and persecution of intellectuals have become standard in dystopian fiction. Most recently remade with Michael B. Jordan in the lead, Fahrenheit 451 envisions a world without books where spoon-fed entertainment supplants critical thinking and leaves the masses docile and disinterested.
In the land of the free, however, that was apparently not unthinkable. This past August 2024, thousands of books on gender and diversity studies were purged from the library of the New College of Florida, a public institution in Sarasota. This prompted an uproar in a nation that considers itself a champion of free speech. It is in the working class, most affected by the economic crisis, that anti-intellectualism (driven by a mixture of resentment against “academic elitism” and reactionary hysteria around the imagined specter of a “woke dictatorship”) is feeding on itself. Trump has happily led this charge, focusing his latest attacks on higher education. In recent months, he’s frozen billions in grants and federal contracts with Harvard and tried to block the university from enrolling international students.
But if dystopian cinema teaches us anything, it’s not to give up hope. Just like we (sometimes) learn from history, we can also learn from fictional futures. Coming back to Children of Men: Theo and Kee’s flight is rich in symbolism. Theo, who has chosen to “believe” in nothing, including hope, in the face of overwhelming tragedy and global disaster, moves from a state of jaded cynicism to a faith in compassion, love, and communal action as the only possible path. That the first child born in 18 years is carried by a nonwhite immigrant isn’t a coincidence. Nor is the name of the boat that will take her to safety: Tomorrow.
Likewise, Jasper (Michael Caine), the hippie-like aging activist played by Michael Caine—and his wife, a former photojournalist wheelchair-bound and surrounded by images of the world she has captured, we have an example of the previous forms of resistance: those of the 1960s and early 2000s, when marches, assemblies, and riots against war, inequality, and police brutality tried to subvert the system.
In one of the film’s most visually stunning scenes (and there are many), Theo pays a visit to his cousin Nigel, a high-ranking official. They chat and casually sip a glass of wine in a sumptuous room, where Picasso’s Guernica can be seen hangs on the wall—a disturbing reminder of the horrors of war, named after the small Basque town bombed during the Spanish Civil War. In a painting, the famous image of the wailing mother and her dead child is chilling and acquires a new symbolic content when referring to Kee, who is pregnant with the last human hope. But for Nigel, Guernica is a decoration in his apartment and, in the words of Alfonso Cuarón, a warning about the transmission of knowledge, values, and patrimony.
In a crumbling world, even the most fundamental principles that uphold society can lose their power. Just ask Bruce Springsteen. His song “Born in the U.S.A.” was a raw critique of working-class struggles in 1980s America—yet conservatives, including President Reagan, repurposed it as a patriotic anthem, completely distorting its original message. The long-running feud between the rock legend and Republican leaders is still going strong. During his recent European tour, Springsteen called Trump a “con man” and “an existential threat to democracy.” Trump fired back, mocking him as “little Bruce” and saying he’s “not talented anymore.” High-level politics, right?
So let’s take a page from the rebels of fiction (and real life). Let’s not give in to despair. Let utopia prevail over dystopia. Even if some try to rewrite our past and control our present, there’s still time to show that our future is ours to write.
I’ve written horoscopes, handed out an award at the Cannes Film Festival, and even interviewed an Avenger. Now, I spend my days teaching and sharing Spanish language and culture with people from all over the world. Last year, I watched over 365 movies—so yeah, I basically live in a parallel reality. And if heaven is real, it’s definitely packed with cats.
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