METROPOLIS Future Shock Film Week at FOMO Cinema Tbilisi

FOMO Cinema Presents: Future Shock

A week of rogue machines, unstable realities, artificial intelligence, cybernetic bodies, corporate paranoia, cosmic dread, and a very cranky robot policeman.

This program traces a century of cinema asking the same uncomfortable question: what happens when human intelligence develops an Artificial Intelligence it can’t fully control?

The answer, judging by this week’s films, is never good.

METROPOLIS

Fritz Lang | 1927 | Germany | 2h28m | Presented with restored intertitles and English subtitles

METROPOLIS is where so much of screen science fiction begins.

Fritz Lang’s silent epic imagines a vast future city divided between the privileged world above ground and the workers who keep its machines running below. Freder, the son of the city’s ruler, discovers the human cost of the system that sustains his comfort. Then comes Maria, the Maschinenmensch, the false prophet robot built to manipulate the masses and protect the interests of power.

Nearly a century later, METROPOLIS still feels enormous. Its architecture shaped the look of cinematic cities from BLADE RUNNER to BATMAN, and even more recently Coppola’s MEGALOPOLIS. Its robot design influenced everything from C-3PO to fashion, music videos and the wider visual language of artificial humanity. The film’s class politics remain blunt in the best way: a society that treats workers as machinery eventually starts to behave like one.

The lore around METROPOLIS is almost as famous as the film itself. It was one of the most expensive films ever made in Weimar Germany, then heavily cut after release, with missing footage turning it into a damaged legend for decades. The 2008 discovery of a near-complete 16mm print in Buenos Aires helped restore much of Lang’s original structure, making the film’s modern reputation feel partly like an archaeological rescue mission.

I’m including METROPOLIS in this week’s FOMO FUTURE SHOCK program because it gives AI one of its first great screen bodies. The Maschinenmensch isn’t just a robot. She’s technology used as spectacle, labour control, political theatre and mass manipulation. That’s a lot for 1927. Frankly, we’re still catching up.

FOOD AND DRINK POLICY: FOMO Cinema Lounge Bar opens 1 hour before the first screening of the day and closes at 02:00,.serving a wide selection of beer, wine, cocktails, and non-alcoholic refreshments including coffee and tea, as well as fresh hot popcorn! Outside food is allowed in the bar but not in the cinema. No alcohol from outside allowed. All guests are invited to arrive early and stay late!

LOCATION: FOMO Secret Cinema, Bazari Orbeliani, Tbilisi. A five minute walk from Liberty Square metro.

HOW TO FIND FOMO: Enter Bazari Orbeliani via Atoneli St above Carrefour and take the stairs on your left to Level 1. Signage on the door. You can also check our Instagram story highlights for a video showing exactly how to find us:
https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17933106294029235/