Director: Jérémie Périn
Set two centuries into a lived-in future, this French animated thriller sends a hard-boiled detective and her android partner through Martian back alleys where a hacking case unravels into something far larger.
What is Mars Express about?
By the year 2200, Mars has its own metropolis, its own underworld, and its own uneasy balance between humans and the synthetic beings who share their world. Private investigator Aline Ruby, alongside her robot partner Carlos Rivera, is hired by a wealthy client to locate a hacker who has gone dark. The trail leads through black-market brain transplants, corporate cover-ups, and a criminal economy built around cloned bodies and stolen consciousness. At the center of it all is a missing teenager whose disappearance is tied to a secret about android rights and autonomy that could upend the fragile order between the planet's human and machine populations. As Ruby and Rivera dig deeper, the case stops being about one hacker and becomes a reckoning with what the colony has built its comfort on. Director Jérémie Périn renders the investigation with the pacing of classic noir, using the Martian setting to ask pointed questions about labor, memory, and who counts as a person.
Cast & crew
Léa Drucker voices Aline Ruby with a weary, procedural cool that suits the noir framework, while Mathieu Amalric brings dry humor and unexpected warmth to Carlos Rivera's android partner. Marthe Keller and Daniel Njo Lobé round out a voice cast that treats the science-fiction premise with the same gravity a live-action detective drama would carry.
Context & significance
Mars Express won recognition at César and Annecy for its animation and screenplay, standing out among 2023 French releases for pairing hand-crafted visual design with a densely plotted cyberpunk mystery. The film draws on genre touchstones from Blade Runner to classic detective fiction, but grounds its ideas about artificial consciousness in a specifically French tradition of philosophically minded science fiction rather than borrowing wholesale from Hollywood.
Where & how to watch
K-Time streams Mars Express with Persian dubbing, and the film's page can be browsed without creating an account. Playing the film itself requires a free K-Time login, and the platform's browsing experience — search, categories, and recommendations — is built around Farsi for audiences across the Iranian diaspora.