Black Mirror: San Junipero

After a chance encounter in 1987, a shy woman tries to reconnect with her partner once a week in this award-winning life-and-death love story.

It’s 1987 and Yorkie has just arrived in the beachside party town of San Junipero. Shy and inexperienced, she feels a bit out of her comfort zone. At the neon-lit nightclub Tuckers, she meets life-of-the-party Kelly, and the two women strike up a relationship that plunges Yorkie into new and exciting territories for the first time.

But then Kelly disappears without explanation. Yorkie sets off to track her down, venturing beyond time, space and even consciousness to find her.

Curator’s note

Science fiction is all about speculating on the future, so it’s rare to find a science fiction story set in the past. Set in 1987 and peppered with enough 80s smash hits to fill a mixtape, San Junipero feeds its audience on a diet of sweet nostalgia before expanding into uncharted territory.

Released as an episode of the Black Mirror series, San Junipero is a rare beacon of positivity in an anthology mostly dedicated to exploring the dangers of new technology. It won two Emmy awards for Outstanding Television Movie (by virtue of it being a standalone story) and Best Writing. Join us for this rare opportunity to see it on the big screen.

– Reece Goodwin, Film & TV Curator