The Re­gress­ion

Is this what the future looks like? Research labs and television studios are set on fire, universities get stormed. "Regression" is the name of the violent movement that has taken up the cause of the technical, cultural and political dismantling of our age, after the unrestricted belief in progress has led humanity to the edge of the abyss. A national regression council declares: Knowledge is torment, ignorance a blessing. Achievements in the fields of science and medicine are negated, communication is simplified, religion is rejected, art and culture get censored. Within 100 years, the accomplishments of civilization gradually regress and society is reverted to an archaic state.
The British playwright Dennis Kelly creates a radical thought experiment and tells this satiric, hyperbolic vision of the future as a family saga over five generations. Each episode is focused on the youth: Dawn, daughter of the movement's founder, sacrifices her love for the sake of her ideals, her children propagate the surveillance state, her grandson resists in an increasingly barbaric environment. However, in a time when the radius of knowledge has been reduced to a minimum, Dawn's great-granddaughter will question the future anew. Are we the last generation capable of setting the course for humanity's survival? Who knows what paths and wrong turns will be taken in the future? The Regression aims at the very heart of our insecure present.