The science fiction of the past thirty years has evolved beyond the midcentury’s optimistic space-age visions into a darker, grittier place, where technology is out of control and resources are running out. Whether you think these imagined dystopian futures are overly dramatic or prescient of harder times to come, their depiction of our downfall can be absolutely riveting, and worth watching for the urban scenery alone. Short films offer an ideal medium for filmmakers of all skill levels to explore these concepts, including architecture that’s taken on a life of its own and high-tech surveillance societies.

In fact, if you want to know what sci-fi films might be coming out in the next few years, keep an eye on the digital shorts that are proliferating across the internet, as many of them get snapped up by major studios to become full-length features.

Spatial Bodies by AUJIK

Architecture in Osaka, Japan takes on a life of its own and begins to grow organically like vines and trees in the short ‘Spatial Bodies’ by AUJIK. “Spatial Bodies depicts the urban landscape and architectural bodies as an autonomous living and self replicating organism. Domesticated and cultivated only by its own nature. A vast concrete vegetation, oscillating between order and chaos,” say the creators, a collective referring to itself as a ‘mysterious nature/tech cult.’

Megalomania by Factory Fifteen

From digital film studio Factory Fifteen, which has produced a number of striking shorts set in the future, Megalomania imagines a world in which cities are constantly in active construction mode. “The built environment is explored as a labyrinth of architecture that is either unfinished, incomplete or broken. Megalomania is a response to the state of infrastructure and capital, evolving the appearance of progress into the sublime.”

TEARS OF STEEL by Ian Hubert/Blender Institute

This Creative Commons-licensed short made entirely with free and open source software was made in the Netherlands by the Blender Institute, which crowd-sources funding in online communities of 3D artists and animators. In ‘Tears of Steel,’ a group of warriors and scientists gathered at Amsterdam’s Oude Kerk attempt to stage a crucial event from the past in a desperate attempt to rescue the world from destructive robots.

The Sand Storm by Jason Wishnow and Christopher Doyle

Starring Chinese dissident and artist Ai Weiwei, ‘The Sand Storm’ by Hong Kong-based cinematographer Christopher Doyle and director Jason Wishnow examines a dystopian future that’s not so far away, where society is facing water shortages and technology is not as helpful as we might hope.

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Urban Dystopia 11 Short Sci Fi Films Set In Future Cities

The moment at which artificial intelligence becomes self-aware enough to overtake humanity is captured on film as robots in a technologically advanced car factory decide to take matters into their own hands and reproduce themselves instead of manufacturing vehicles. Produced for The History Channel and set in a Detroit car plant on an unspecified future date, ‘ANA’ by Factory Fifteen is one of a series of vignettes exploring an AI who realizes she can trick her not-so-bright human overseer and unite virtually all robots around the world into a single, powerful mechanical organism.

Content in his belief that he’s got everything under control, the factory worker browses news on his tablet and munches on fast food while the machines do all the work just beyond his control room windows. It isn’t until he’s alerted to a backlog on vehicle production that he notices something’s wrong. Little does he know that ANA is watching him, analyzing his heart and respiration rate to gauge his response to her unexpected disobedience.

Suddenly, instead of robots on the production screens, we see plans for building robots. Once machines become intelligent enough to outsmart their creators, how can a single human in a factory full of them prevent the consequences? Suffice to say, you probably don’t want Skynet activating its self defense systems against you.

Says Factory Fifteen, “We collaborated with Raw TV on the development of our original take on the singularity, the point where artificial intelligence becomes self aware and more intelligent than the human race. We created a seven minute proof of concept, teasing at a larger project currently in development. Our role developed along the course of the project from consultation and script development, to directing an ambitious live action shoot and finally delivering TV standard visual effects, all in house in the Factory Fifteen Studio.”

Humans have created a vast population of robotic workers to take on the tasks that they no longer want to carry out themselves, resulting in a disenchanted robot underclass that that takes over the Brixton area of South London. This is the premise of an incredible short film called ‘Robots of Brixton’ by Factory Fifteen, a collective of six animators based in London.

Each of the six members of Factory Fifteen created their own short film for the premiere of their animation company in 2011, and ‘Robots of Brixton’ is the work of Brixton-born-and-bred Kibwe Tavares. The film, which is magnificently detailed and filled with towering fantasy architecture, echoes the real-life riots that took place in the neighborhood in 1981.

All six members of Factory Fifteen graduated from the Bartlett School of Architecture, and that education shows in Tavares’ layered, chaotic tapestry of parasitic buildings that have multiplied over the city’s existing architecture.

Envisioning an urban future in which hopeful expectations of dazzling technology have been replaced with the harsh realities of war, discontent and decay, Robots of Brixton focuses on the lives of two robot protagonists.

“When people imagine cities in the future, they think of flying cars and brand new everything,” Tavares tells Glass Magazine. “But if you look around London, old is meshed with new and buildings which are hundreds of years old sit alongside buildings which are 50 years old, which sit alongside contemporary stuff. In fifty years time, most of the fabric of Brixton will remain the same, which is why I concentrated on additions”.