Good science fiction offers us the chance to look at everything in a completely new way. To enter a brave new world, to experience civilisations anew and to speculate on the wonders that the universe has to offer.

In many ways this is pure escapism – and there is nothing wrong with that whatsoever. In an everyday world which can feel scary and isolating at the best of times, the temptation to immerse oneself in another time and place is strong indeed.

But the films in this selection also helps us to reconfigure the world in which we live in today. While they all represent inventive futures and fantastical worlds that are yet to exist, they all have a sense of the contemporary which is familiar to us all. Themes of climate apocalypse, immigration and even the obsolescence of popular culture run throughout the films and remind us that those brave new worlds are both far away and close to us at the same time.