Optimism is 'kind of a lie,' says Natalie Portman. And that's what makes Arco hopeful

In writer and director Ugo Bienvenu’s Arco, there isn't just a vision of the future. There are two.

That comes partially from the plot. Separating its story between two time periods, the French animated film charts a 10-year-old boy's accidental trip back in time from the future of 2932 to our near future of 2075.

But it also comes from what happens in those time periods. The child from that far future lives in a world ravaged by climate catastrophe and rising tides, and a world — though still beautiful, especially given Bienvenu's lush 2D artstyle — left more or less uninhabitable.

And while the near future he arrives in is somewhat more recognizable, it is clearly threatened by the coming changes: A gigantic forest fire rages on the fringes of the village he tumbles into, while the inhabitants basically do whatever they can to avoid thinking about it.

To Bienvenu and actor Natalie Portman — who co-produced the film and stars in it — those two outlooks represent two stages of our own possible future.

"To me it's hopeful. I made [Arco] to give strength to the new generation and also the will to trust our souls — our desires, our ideas," Bienvenu said in an interview with CBC News. "Ideas are small things, but they are super important. And I think these are the only things that can save us."

When approaching the project, it was this aspect that first attracted Portman. There is both a dark and light version of our future in Ugo's film, she said — though neither are entirely optimistic or pessimistic.

"Because that's a lie, because we don't know what the future is.... And [that means] not having a fatalistic idea — whether that's optimistic, because optimism is also kind of a lie. You can't just be like, 'It's gonna get better, don't worry about it,'" she said.

"Having a fixed idea of what the future will be is A) untrue, and B) makes you passive, makes you like: 'There's nothing I can do to change it.' And so I think in Ugo's vision, there's a real belief in imagination and creativity and human innovation to change the future. And I think that's where we can put our hope."

That tendency to touch on solutions without delivering a clear prediction has worked out well so far; the film won best animated feature at the European Film Awards earlier this year and is nominated in the same category at the 98th Academy Awards on March 15.

But to Bienvenu, unequivocal triumph was never the point.

"The movie was about [how] losing, sometimes, is winning at the end," he said.

"It's an old sentence, but 'Ex falso verum sequitur,' which is a Greek or Roman sentence. It's like, 'From wrong comes the right.' And it was a sentence that was going in my mind all the way. And to me, Arco is a bit of the demonstration of that."