An all-star cast that includes Vincent Gallo, Juliette Lewis, Udo Kier, Stellan and Alexander Skarsgard lends their voices to this ambitious film four years in the making. In classic paranoid science fiction tradition comes Tarik Saleh’s dystopian animated feature, where Big Brother is not content to be watching; he will be inside our heads. In 2024, the oil supply has all but dried up and travel is now carried out on a trans-European underground railway line ? Metropia. When office drone Roger starts hearing a voice that shouldn’t be inside his head, he goes off book and begins a pursuit of TV star Nina, who may also be a terrorist. Classical science fiction ideas and themes ? government conspiracy, mind control, omnipresent media ? play out against a stunning and suitably disturbing blue-gray color palette, with characters created from highly stylized, reworked photographs. One-time graffiti artist Saleh’s near-photorealistic images are rendered in support of the story, and while artistically dazzling, never overwhelm his message. [Metropia] is a soothing tonic in this day and age of hollow technological wizardry.