Pure storytelling perfection takes the form of Arco at Manchester Animation Festival 2025

★★★★★

Arco is my landslide favourite from the Manchester Animation Festival 2025. It is a boy from the distant future who accidentally travels back to the near-future (specifically, 2075) where he meets Iris, a young girl wise beyond her years. Instinctively drawn to Arco, Iris shelters him and helps him attempt to get back home. Their efforts are threatened by a trio of eccentric outsider brothers Stewie, Dougie, and Frankie who steal the crystal that allows Arco to move through time.

The film combines heart and comedy with unique visuals and science fiction to create an intricately crafted, soulful piece. Suffice to say I think this is a film everyone should see when it gets its wide release early next year.

Arco’s world is surreally utopian. People live in tiered, tree-like structures so high above ground the brilliantly green scenery is punctured by grey-white clouds. Their gardens are lush, and suggest a thriving environment – more on this later. The family wears identical green/beige onesies which make their smooth, slender – and almost genderless – figures look subtly alien. They sleep not in beds, but suspended, floating eerily above the floor. Cleverly, the subtle detail that their irises and bodysuits are so close in hue makes the eyes look just too pale against their light-brown skin, and this unfamiliarity adds to their futuristic appearance.

The most iconic feature of the whole film is the time-travel costume: a red bodysuit with a rainbow cape and tight hood that covers all except the face, crowned by a clean-cut diamond, and transforms wearers into rainbows when in the sky. Though the housing situation of the future Earth people is explained later in the story, the rest is pure creative license. These decisions are part of what makes Arco work so well. It does not need to justify its artistic decisions, it does so because it can, and in this it uses the animated medium purposefully and with care.

Iris’ version of Earth is unsettling, its close resemblance to the present day punctured by an evidently worsening climate situation and significant developments in technology. Humanoid robots are all-too prominent features of society, repairing roads, acting as nannies and housekeepers, and making up the entire teaching staff of Iris's school. Biblical-level storms loom forebodingly in the background, falling silently on invisible domes as people go about their lives: business as usual. A wildfire ignites with ominous spontaneity.

In what we briefly see of Arco’s family, they are physically present with each other, and the surrounding landscape visible through the glass windows makes the scene appear like an ancient ritual. Contrastingly, Iris’s home appears much more similar to ours, but she suffers from a deep longing for parental love. Though they are alive and well, their work in the city leaves them largely absent, but they communicate via hyper-futuristic hologram calls which allow them to appear in Iris’s room to read to her before bed, in the form of ghostlike blue figures. They cannot kiss her goodnight, though, or hold their baby son.

Instead, Iris and her brother are cared for by the lovable housekeeping robot Mikki. When Arco is taken back to Iris’, then, he meets Mikki and is instantly terrified. This is not simply a surface-level reaction to his mechanical parts and glowing red eyes; this is a repulsion from the irresponsibly haphazard blend of high and low-tech that replaces the familial with the mechanic. In this way, Arco intertwines technological and environmental commentary with emotional poignancy.

If the worldbuilding draws you in, the connection between Arco and Iris convinces you to stay. The sensitive impact of their sweet moments is heightened by the constant tension between innocence and varied forms of imminent danger. Characterised by genuine care with flickers of childish awkwardness and uncertainty, their bond perfectly captures the sense of largeness you feel with someone when you’re so young. It is heart-warming and innocent, while simultaneously intense and instinctive. They have a mutual, pure fascination with each other that extends beyond their different time periods and becomes deeply, soulfully human. I liked the subtle detail compounded by the symbolism of their names: the film's original French suggests Arco gets his name from the rainbow itself, arc-en-ciel literally 'arch in the sky', while 'Iris' is the name of the ancient Greek goddess of the rainbow.

It might sound abstract in concept, but the tight storytelling and developed characters keep Arco down to earth and maintain the anticipation throughout. This film testifies to the necessity of animation in the cinematic world because what it achieves is simply impossible otherwise. It marries captivating artwork with a compelling script to create an unforgettably moving story.