This taut 2006 thriller directed by Alfonso Cuarón takes place in a near-future Earth where no one has been able to conceive a child in 18 years. Theo Faron (Clive Owen), a former activist, is given the task of protecting a teenage girl named Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey), the only woman in the world known to be fertile. The themes of immigration and harm to the environment are all too relevant.
Monitor film critic Peter Rainer wrote that the movie is "a fully imagined vision of dystopia... 'Children of Men' is the rare piece of futurism that actually looks and feels like it was taking place years from now... it's a doomsday nightmare that seems all too contemporary. And that contemporaneity is, of course, the mark of a true apocalyptic vision."
Director Cuarón is also behind another classic sci-fi film that's further up on our ranking.
