When we started making the film, I had no idea how bad it actually was.” But I’m a little embarrassed to admit that this is also kind of news to me. “I believe that this is actually what the Apocalypse looks like,” she says, “We are risking Earth to become uninhabitable for us and lots of other species. Rather, it’s telling of Kågerman’s generally pessimistic view of humanity, people prone to breaking everything no matter where in the cosmos we find ourselves. Kågerman begins Aniara with climate change as the reason space travel became an everyday reality, but that’s not to say our planet burning up is what will get us to space. I find that quite breathtaking! I can’t grasp the vastness of space! How completely unique Earth is, or at least how enormous the distances to a planet similar to Earth is, at least in our measurements.” Every human ever born, was born here on Earth. “It’s a thought experiment really,” she says via email, “because so far no one has experienced this. Second exclusive poster for Pella Kågerman's 'Aniara.' Magnolia Pictures Inverse also has exclusive posters for the film, which you can see below. Kågerman tells Inverse that she “wanted to explore what it means to be human without Earth.”

spa” that lets people see and experience a green Earth before it fell to ruins. In a change from Martinson’s original poem, Kågerman tells the story from the perspective of Mimaroben (Emelie Jonsson), a custodian at an “A.I. The Aniara drifts in space for years, its passengers losing both their and their hope for survival. In theaters on May 17, Aniara, co-written and directed by Kågerman and Hugo Lilja, follows travelers aboard the massive “Aniara,” a spaceship embarking on a three-week voyage to Mars when it’s knocked off course. Over 60 years later, Martinson’s story is just as resonant, as co-director Pella Kågerman frames the urgent issue of climate change as the reason humans feel bound for the stars - and die trying to escape. In 1956, Swedish Nobel laureate Harry Martinson wrote and published his science fiction poem Aniara which tells the story of colonists, leaving a ravaged Earth, who feel despair as their spacecraft is stranded on the way to Mars.

Aniara poem