In 2075, a girl witnesses a mysterious boy in a rainbow suit fall from the sky. He comes from an idyllic far future where time travel is possible. A film by Ugo Bienvenu, featuring the voices of Swann Arlaud, Alma Jodorowsky, Margot Ringard Oldra, Oscar Tresanini, Vincent Macaigne, Louis Garrel, William Lebghil, Joséphine Mancini, Nathanaël Perrot, Félix de Givry, Sophie Mas, Frédérique Cantrel, and Oxmo Puccino.

In a distant future, following a period known as The Great Fallow (La Grande jachère), the seas rose until nearly everything was swallowed beneath the waves. At first, humanity retreated to higher ground, surrendering the lowlands to let the Earth breathe and heal. But as the waters kept climbing and solid ground grew scarce, people abandoned their electronics and thinking machines. Looking upward, they built their homes on vast platforms anchored to towering pillars that rose from the deep like the colossal trunks of impossible trees. Each branch, each platform, is now home to a single family. Isolated pockets of life, adrift between clouds and sea.

Arco (Oscar Tresanini) is a young boy living with his sister Ada (Joséphine Mancini) and their parents (Swann Arlaud & Alma Jodorowsky). Ada and their parents often venture out to explore, each wearing a specially made rainbow costume equipped with a mystical diamond that grants them the ability to fly and travel through time. Each time they return, they bring back something small from the past. Whether it is a plant, a seed, or a fragment of a lost world, these are things they can study and carefully grow at home.

Arco always gets excited when they return, and he constantly pesters his father to let him come along. Obsessed with dinosaurs, he dreams of seeing them with his own eyes. But no matter how much he pleads, the answer is always no. The law strictly forbids anyone under the age of twelve to fly.

As night falls, Arco stealthily takes his sister’s rainbow cloak and steals her mystical diamond, his mind fixed on finally seeing the dinosaurs. Driven by pure obsession and with absolutely no flying experience, he leaps off the platform ledge and instantly drops like a stone. But as he falls, instinct takes over. Arco frantically figures out how to maneuver in mid-air, steadying his descent just in time to initiate his very first jump through time.

Meanwhile, in 2075, the world before The Great Fallow is already unraveling under the weight of relentless natural disasters. As a violent rainstorm ravages the landscape, families remain safely enclosed inside their glass-like domes. Shielded from the chaos outside, they carry on with their daily lives in perfect peace, sharing uninterrupted moments with their loved ones.

This section is currently in progress.

ARCO premiered at Festival de Cannes on 16 May 2025. The film was theatrically released in France on 22 October.