Christopher Webster [Celluloid 01.25.16] cyberpunk scifi horror action thriller adventure



So, what the heck is Polder you ask, and what did I just watch? Well, from what I can tell it's sci-fi, it's horror, it's cyberpunk, it's alternate reality art-house and everything in between. It's a film, a game and the biggest Swiss transmedia venture ever. In short, I have no idea, but I want more now!

According to creator Samuel Schwarz - a film and theatre director and the founder of Theatre group "400asa" - the Polder film is but one adaptation, or "touchpoint" for the whole Polder project that includes




More specifically, according to the Encyclopedia of Fantasy, Polders are:

"enclaves of toughened reality demarcated by boundaries (thresholds) from the surrounding world... an active microcosm, armed against the potential wrongness of that which surrounds it, an anachronism consciously opposed to wrong time. Polders change only when they are being devoured from without."

Examples of Polders in the fantasy world woul be Tolkien’s "Shire" or Hogwarts from the Harry Potter series, but digital worlds make especially intensive polders possible — with the large global corporations being ideal ‘hosts’.


About the story:
NEUROO-X, a German-Swiss-Chinese entertainment company group, stands for games that dissolve the boundary between reality and gaming). A new gadget, the myth-enshrouded RED BOOK, offers the ultimate gaming experience. The most secret longings of gamers are scanned by the engine and transformed into fantastic adventures. The conspiracy psychoses of users are the raw material for the storytelling of NEUROO-X.

Marcus, Chief Development Manager of NEUROO-X dies shortly before completion of the RED BOOK. His lover Ryuko finds out that something terrible happened during testing of the game in China, and the deeper she submerges into the secret of NEUROO-X, the more she loses touch with reality. She neglects her son Walter, who logs into the game and disappears into the digital parallel world. The more Ryuko fights the corporation in order to rescue her son, the more she updates the narrative desired by NEUROO-X. Ryuko finds herself in a world full of demons, witches, knights and terrorists.


Polder (the film) is expected to see release in 2016.

Fore more weirdness visit the official Polder website




Recommend Release: The Matrix Collection




Follow Christopher Webster on Twitter.





With research from The Woolf

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