Join us at the Rio Theatre on Saturday, August 9 as we take "a sublime trip to a fine new world," with one of the all-time great midnight movie cult-classics, director René Laloux's 1973 animated marvel FANTASTIC PLANET.

Nothing else has ever looked or felt like this film, a politically minded and visually inventive work of science fiction. The film is set on a distant planet called Ygam, where enslaved humans (Oms) are the playthings of giant blue native inhabitants (Draags). After Terr, kept as a pet since infancy, escapes from his gigantic child captor, he is swept up by a band of radical fellow Oms who are resisting the Draags' oppression and violence. With its eerie, coolly surreal cutout animation by Roland Topor, brilliant psychedelic jazz score by Alain Goraguer, and wondrous creatures and landscapes, this Cannes-awarded counterculture classic is a perennially compelling statement against conformity and violence.

"Surreal and wonderful." (Empire Magazine)

"A beautiful mixture of art, theme, story, and symbolism." (Nerdist)

"An animated epic that is by turns surreal and lovely, fantastic and graceful." (Rotten Tomatoes)

"It's not every fancifully encoded cautionary tale that can survive the demise of its historical villains, and it's not every stoner midnight movie that can stand a second viewing in the sober light of day." (Village Voice)

Saturday, August 9
Doors 10:00 pm | Movie 10:30 pm *Start time subject to change. Please arrive on time.

FANTASTIC PLANET "La Planète sauvage" (René Laloux, 1973, 72 mins / PG / French with English subs) This futuristic story takes place on a faraway planet where giants rule, and oppressed humanoids rebel against the machine-like leaders.