Rollerball (35mm)

Selected by Richard Learoyd

In the not-too-distant future, corporations hold gladiatorial ball tournaments as substitutes for war. James Caan stars as a wildly popular rebel rollerballer who has had enough of a spectacle that takes extreme sports (or is it reality television?) to a violent new level. Jewison’s entry in the robust 1970s tradition of imaginative dystopias paints a future where a supposedly perfect world comes at a terrible cost. With Orson Welles collaborator John Houseman as an evil executive.

Part of the Fraenkel Film Festival