‘Anima’ Review: Sydney Chandler and Takehiro Hira Ground Brian Tetsuro Ivie’s Low-Fi Sci-Fi Road Movie [B+] SXSW
To talk about science fiction is to talk about humanity, and with that comes the inevitable ideas about immortality and extended consciousness. Anima isn’t the first film to explore the concept of uploading consciousness, but writer/director Brian Tetsuro Ivie’s pensive and self-reflective approach makes the film worth a look.
In a similar vein to Kogonada’s Columbus and After Yang, Anima isn’t too concerned with the rules and world-building of its science fiction. Aside from some architecture designs that evoke the classic empty space we often see in futuristic rooms, most of the film embraces an urban aesthetic, as it largely focuses on the relationship between its two leads as they travel on the road. Beck (Alien: Earth’s Sydney Chandler) is out of a job, when she suddenly comes across Anima, a company that offers its clients a chance to upload their consciousness into a digital cloud, allowing their friends and relatives to be able to visit them whenever they want. According to the company, Beck is a perfect fit for their most valuable client: successful button manufacturer Paul (Shōgun’s Takehiro Hira). Her job is to pick up Paul and take him to his “final appointment,” where the upload procedure will take place. But for Paul, who constantly tries to delay the inevitable, he instead tries to use this road trip to take care of unfinished business.
This unlikely pair makes room for interesting conflict and shared regret. Ivie takes care in identifying the gap that separates Beck and Paul. Aside from the clear generational differences, the two could not come from more different worlds. Beck grew up around music, but holds a thorny relationship with it, given her late father was a musician who put his art first. After having just been laid off at a store that makes robot pets (hilariously called F-Pets), Beck feels the weight of life not going her way. Paul is the exact opposite. He’s largely successful and extremely wealthy, but he’s incredibly lonely. His valuables are the antithesis of tech, from his business being about buttons to his choice of car being a vintage Nissan. Most of all, he’s dying.
As Paul constantly offers to pay Beck to stay with him and extend their trip, she realizes one of his unfinished business is to find his teenage son… who he’s never met before. His son is Ryan, played with a rare sensitivity by Maximilian Lee Piazza that caught me off guard. It doesn’t take long for the pair to locate him – he literally just started his new job at F-Pets. Beck starts the conversation by commenting how having a robot pet must be nice, given that they will never die. Ryan naturally responds by asking her if she lost a pet herself. It’s a subtle, much appreciated detail in the writing that as our world becomes more artificial, we become more vulnerable and aching.
Along the way, Ivie makes great use of the supporting cast, which brings an insightful contrast to what feels real and what feels synthetic. Characters range from Beck’s anti-capitalist mother (Maria Dizzia) to Paul’s co-worker (played by Tom McCarthy, in one of the film’s lighter moments) and Paul’s ex-wife (Lili Taylor). Meanwhile, the woman who works at Anima and interacts with Beck (Marin Ireland) is played so passively, you would mistake her for an android. These all contribute to the film’s quiet but affecting view of human relationships.
Chandler gives a grounded performance in the film as Beck, a woman who hides a lot of her true feelings behind a stoic mask. One can tell that she has experienced disappointment time and time again, and has hardened herself as the world becomes more distant. As for the character of Paul, it’s really good to see Hira give a quiet performance where we can feel a lot of hurt and regret in his eyes. Fans of his performance in Rental Family last year will find a lot to love here, in the way Hira and Ive’s script convey loneliness.
There’s a quote later in the film about buttons, that they are the most useless product in the world, that is until you lose one and it becomes all you think about all day. As Brian Tetsuro Ivie carefully paces Anima, asking us to be present with his characters, it becomes clear that he sees time itself as that. Like many great voices in science fiction have said before, we don’t learn to appreciate the present until it becomes the past.
It’s easy to confuse the narrative restraint in Anima with uneventfulness. It avoids dramatizing a scene and instead opts for a more organic unveiling of hidden emotions. From the ethereal score that often sounds like it’s merging with the sound of tech and the ambience of dreams, to its choice of Japanese folk songs and references to Twin Peaks, Anima becomes a deeply rewarding experience about found connections, love lost, and love found.
Grade: B+
This review is from the 2026 SXSW Film Festival. Anima is currently seeking distribution.
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