Abstract
The images and themes in the Britain of Alfonso Cuarón's 2006 film Children of Men resonate with current politics. In this childless world, the state mandates fertility tests of its citizens, while also forcing refugees and immigrants into cages and sprawling detention zones. State power is unleashed on human bodies, as certain lives are prized and encouraged to have babies, while others are deemed not worth living. The figure of Kee, a Black refugee who is also pregnant, complicates the narrative: She is an unwanted refugee who promises a future with children. Her presence raises urgent, contemporary questions about the value of children and the status of refugees. This is a film in which reproduction, psychopharmacology, and euthanasia collide with biopolitical control of whole populations, whether through the policing of fertility or the criminalizing of global mobility. The question of the value of a human life-whether a newborn, a worker, an older adult, or an immigrant-is central to the film's aesthetic and ethical concerns. The themes of fertility and the status of the human in this science fiction film from 20 years ago are reflected in the real world we live in today.