Science on Screen: The Pod Generation

Part of the SCIENCE ON SCREEN® Series
An initiative of the Coolidge Corner Theater in partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

The Pod Generation
2023, USA/France, Sci-fi comedy/satire, 110 minutes
Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival

In Sophie Barthes’ witty, unsettling The Pod Generation, a New York couple (Emilia Clarke, Chiwetel Ejiofor) is offered a tantalizing new possibility: instead of pregnancy, they can grow their baby in a detachable artificial womb, or “pod”, provided by a powerful tech company. For Rachel, a rising executive, it promises freedom and convenience. For Alvy, a botanist who believes in the messy, organic rhythms of nature, it represents something much harder to embrace.

Winner of the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize at Sundance, The Pod Generation uses a near-future fantasy to ask questions that are becoming increasingly real: Could artificial wombs transform pregnancy and parenting? Would they liberate us from the physical demands of reproduction, or create new forms of control? And when technology can make reproduction more convenient, who gets to decide what progress looks like?