Another Earth

A duplicate Earth appears in the sky. The same night, Rhoda kills a family while driving drunk. Years later, out of prison, she takes a cleaning job in the survivor's house and never tells him who she is. Mike Cahill directed and co-wrote with Brit Marling, who stars. The idea grew from a question about what would happen if you met your own copy. The budget stayed under 100,000 dollars. That was possible because Cahill shot in his Connecticut hometown using local resources, with his childhood home serving as a location. At Sundance in 2011 it won the Alfred P. Sloan Prize, given to films built on science or technology, and it took the Audience Award at the Maui Film Festival and nominations at the 38th Saturn Awards. Fox Searchlight acquired distribution for somewhere between 1.5 and 2 million dollars, beating Focus Features and the Weinstein Company. Roger Ebert gave it three and a half stars and compared it to Tarkovsky's Solaris. The Rotten Tomatoes consensus is even-handed: plenty of profound concepts to ponder, weighed down by placid pacing. Who it is for: viewers who like science fiction as an idea rather than an effects budget. Who it is not for: anyone wanting scientific coherence. The physics of the second Earth is never explained and the film does not care.