Strange Days
Dir. Kathryn Bigelow, 1995
145 min
With Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, and Vincent D’Onofrio

Before she became the first woman to win an Academy Award for Best Director, Kathryn Bigelow was the first woman to win Best Director at the Saturn Awards for science fiction, fantasy, and horror films, with Strange Days. Set during the last two days of the twentieth century, the film follows former Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) cop Lenny Nero (Fiennes), who now sells illegal SQUID discs, a technology that allows a person’s memories and physical sensations to be recorded and re-experienced, on the black market. When he anonymously receives a SQUID disc containing the recording of the murder of a sex worker, Lenny enlists the help of his friend, professional bodyguard Mace (Bassett), to find the killer, and the pair stumble across a vast conspiracy within the LAPD. Although originally conceived by producer James Cameron in 1986, Bigelow re-envisioned Strange Days after the 1992 Los Angeles riots, crafting a work that distills the technological anxieties and social tensions of race, power, and gender on the eve of the third millennium.