Movie Details
Title: Exterritorial (2025)
Genre: Sci-Fi Political Thriller / Philosophical Drama / Dystopian Mystery
Country: United States / France / United Arab Emirates
Duration: 2h 19min
Director: Jonathan Glazer
Screenplay: Charlie Kaufman
Music: Mica Levi
Starring: Tilda Swinton, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Léa Seydoux, Ciarán Hinds, Dev Patel
In the year 2046, the world's most powerful corporations have established independent “exterritorial zones”—borderless city-states immune to national law. Governed by privatized ethics and AI-augmented tribunals, these Zones promise peace, freedom, and innovation—but at a cost.
Exterritorial follows Mara Ellison (Tilda Swinton), a philosopher turned legal archivist, as she is summoned to investigate a Zone’s first internal murder in decades. The victim: a whistleblowing neuroscientist. The accused: a non-citizen asylum seeker (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) whose presence in the Zone is legally impossible.
Key Themes & Visual Style:
- Post-Nationalism & Corporate Sovereignty: A critical look at what happens when corporations become countries.
- Ethics vs. Algorithms: Can morality exist when law is programmed?
- Truth in a Post-Fact World: The fragility of reality when every system is self-authored.
- Exile and Belonging: Explores what it means to be stateless in a world of designed identities.
- Cold, sterile production design with brutalist architecture softened by futuristic minimalism.
- Long, silent tracking shots; abstract lighting; uncanny AI interface visuals.
- Surreal dream sequences layered over courtroom logic, reality warping as truth decays.
- An eerie, non-traditional score by Mica Levi blending fractured ambient tones with minimalist strings.