Z.P.G. 1972

Russ Oliver Reed and Carol McNeil Geraldine Chaplin work in a museum that recreates life in the early 20th century. In a bleak, polluted future, the Earth is choked by smog and resources are scarce, forcing widespread masks on the population. To curb the exploding population, the world government imposes a 30-year ban on childbirth. The penalty for breaking this law is severe: parents and newborns alike face the death penalty, and the regime keeps people in line through brainwashing and robotic substitutes. Execution is carried out by suffocation under a plastic dome, a stark reminder of the state’s unyielding control. To cope, couples attend Babyland where they are handed life-size animatronic children as substitutes for real babies.

Carol longs for a child, and when she conceives, she defies the bathroom’s abortion device to ensure the pregnancy continues. After the baby is born, the couple must shield the infant from detection, living under the constant pressure of a surveillance state that punishes any sign of real parenthood. The pressure intensifies as the boundaries between private desire and public law blur, and neighbors begin to look upon the newborn with a mix of awe and suspicion.

When neighbors George Don Gordon and Edna Borden Diane Cilento discover the living child, jealousy and envy quickly replace any initial goodwill. The Bordens’ offer to help conceal the baby devolves into a power struggle, as they try to claim the child for themselves, treating it as a possession rather than a person. The McNeils and the Bordens descend into a dangerous contest that pits friendship against parental bond, all under the watchful eyes of a regime that treats any real newborn as a threat to order.

Captured and placed beneath one of the state’s dreaded execution domes, the McNeils stage a desperate escape. They dig through dark, subterranean passages and travel by raft, pushing toward a remote island where the air appears unpolluted. The journey ends on an island whose surface belies a complicated history: it may be radioactive, having been used to bury old nuclear missiles in 1978. Despite this ominous caveat, the family presses on, hoping to forge a new life away from the suffocating smog and relentless gaze of a government that would rather erase humanity than risk losing control.