One of the best movies I’ve seen this year is a French-Canadian sci-fi movie called Project M (Projet-M) – shot for about the cost of a small house and originally set up as a web series. Four astronauts on a 1,000-day mission aboard a space station find themselves at a loss when, 900 days in, nuclear war breaks out on Earth.
Project M, in its director’s cut (an earlier cut ran at the Fantasia Film Festival), is a world premiere that appeared at the Calgary International Film Festival this evening. Originally a web series, the French-Canadian production was shot for $260,000 (there are plenty of more expensive houses) and posted in French. The cut making its debut in Calgary runs a sleek 98-minutes and interweaves the life of four astronauts on a space station with documentary and news footage and the memories of the four.
The possibility of finding fresh water on Europa, a moon of Jupiter, has led to a test mission to see how a crew of four would handle the round trip to that moon. The mission is set up and funded by a now independent Quebec that has used its fresh water supplies to become a wealthy nation – parallels with Middle Eastern countries becoming wealthy for selling oil are intended.
The crew consists of commanding officer – and the second person to stand on Mars, Vincent Kohler (Jean-Nicolas Verreault, Durham County); second-in-command/health officer, Dr. Andrea Sakedaris (Julie Perreault); engineer Justine Roberval (Nadia Essadiqi) and scientist/problem solver Jonathan Laforest (Julien Deschamps Jolin, who also co-wrote).
900 days into the mission, the four are horrified to see a series of explosions on the Earth’s surface – nuclear war has been declared mere days after an unmanned probed did, in fact, find fresh water on Europa.
Project M looks at humanity through a microcosm – distilling the world down to four people, and examining how they react when, after being prepared for any problem on the station, are confronted with the problem of survival after things go wrong where they have no control; no solution.
First we see the crew handle a problem with approaching space debris – this showcases their extreme competence. Then there’s what seems to be a terrorist act in Montreal that affects one of them deeply – followed by the nuclear explosions – which look oddly beautiful from space. In moments, they have lost contact with home and communication with other nations’ space stations can be considered problematic at best.
Then, as we follow the backstory of the mission and the characters, we learn how they came to be where they are – and watch as they each react to their changing situation, some better than others. The situation is exacerbated by there being a limited supply of food and water, so if there’s any chance of coming up with a Plan B, it has to happen quickly.
Other than a brief contact with a German station – cut off by Commander Kohler, for reasons of security – the crew are alone until a Russian cosmonaut, dying of radiation poisoning, comes aboard. His explanation for why the nuclear war happened is both unexpected and dramatic.
Project M is sleek and well-paced; we get to know the crew, and the people who created and designed the project, through the documentary footage and flashbacks. Like Gravity, the film explores human loss, ingenuity and the capacity for hope.
It has a huge number of VFX that hold up really well on a big screen – showing what today’s technology can do. The space station, for example, looks beautiful – and the practical sets (the station’s interiors are sets and the props look authentic) must have been a beast to design and build on the film’s micro-budget.
There were a few glitches in the subtitles – the translation of some colloquial expressions seemed a bit off – but there was no problem in basic comprehensibility and the moments of humor transposed well.
I have to say that director/co-writer Eric Piccoli is someone we should be watching out for – to say Project M is his Monsters is not an understatement. Kudos to him and his co-writers Jolin and Mario J. Ramos, as well. You don’t make a film this good unless it’s great on the page.
Project M is one of the best films I’ve seen so far this year.
Final Grade: A+