Tokyo is covered by mushroom clouds after the nuclear explosion. Seoul is in danger because of a monster from the Han River attacking people. The Eiffel Tower melts down from chemicals, and the Statue of Liberty is buried in snow.

All of these scenes are from disaster movies.

But in 2020, a movie-like disaster barged into our reality. Due to the unprecedented pandemic, we experienced the sudden collapse of ‘normal’ lives. And it is still happening.

"Pirated Future" begins with this locus of conflicts. The film observes the conflicting yet perpetuating process of the production, consumption, and reproduction of images of disasters in real life and also in the virtual world.

The disaster site in Chernobyl is crowded with tourists. The tsunamis in Japan, and the chaos caused by COVID-19 in Korea, are transferred into images on phones and shared in real time. Have we simply come to regard disasters in real life as virtual disaster images? "Pirated Future" meets the people situated between the real disasters and images, such as those who create the graphics of disaster movies and those who monitor the real-life disasters in real time report videos. It questions how they deal with images and reality.

At this moment, when disasters in reality feel more surreal than the virtual dystopian images, what kind of future can we envision? "Pirated Future" investigates the waves generated in the process of production and distribution of disaster images. Thus, it presents a turbulent journey to find our place between image and reality.