Did Children of Men Come True? A Claim-by-Claim Check Before 2027
The film is set in 2027, which is next year. We checked its four ledger claims against what has actually happened, and then picked three stories for anyone who wants more.
Children of Men did not come true in its central premise. Babies are still being born everywhere, and our ledger marks global infertility as far off. But three things around that premise did arrive or are arriving: a birth rate treated as a national emergency, a Britain that detains and removes asylum seekers, and state-backed assisted death.
Alfonso Cuarón's film is set in 2027, and it's the highest-scoring work in our archive at 9.2. That makes it worth checking now, with the date a year away. The short answer: it got the cause wrong and the consequences right, which is the better way round for a prophecy.
Below is each claim from the film's ledger, with its status. For the full reasoning and sources, read the review and the ledger at the end of it.
The film opens with the death of the youngest person on Earth and follows a burnt-out civil servant escorting the first pregnant woman in eighteen years across a militarised Britain. It is made of long takes that refuse you the edit, and it sets its future in a world that is the present, a bit dirtier. Its one weak spot is Kee, who is given less inner life than the plot leans on her for. It's the film to see first, and its reading is ARRIVING.
Claim by claim
Global infertility: FAR. Nothing is known to cause sudden worldwide infertility. A large 2022 meta-analysis found sperm counts among unselected men roughly halved between 1973 and 2018, which is worrying, but births have fallen because people have chosen to have fewer children. The UN expects world population to peak at about 10.3 billion in the mid-2080s.
A birth rate treated as a national emergency: ARRIVED. South Korea's fertility rate fell to 0.72 in 2023, and its president called it a national crisis and planned a new ministry. It rose to 0.75 in 2024, so the emergency is real but not a one-way slide.
Detention and removal of asylum seekers: ARRIVING. The Illegal Migration Act 2023 placed a duty on the Home Secretary to remove people who arrive irregularly. Asylum seekers were housed on the Bibby Stockholm barge in Dorset from August 2023 to November 2024, and the Supreme Court ruled the Rwanda plan unlawful in November 2023. There are no armed camps on the coast, and the date in our ledger is for the policy, not the cages.
A state-supplied means of suicide: ARRIVING. Canada provided assisted deaths to 15,343 people in 2023, about 4.7% of all deaths. In November 2024 MPs voted 330 to 275 to back a bill to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults in England and Wales. Nothing like Quietus, handed out with the rations, exists.
If the border politics were the part that stayed with you
Russell T Davies follows one Manchester family from 2019 to 2034, and the big events reach them as phone notifications and a radio in the next room. It got a lot right: a second Trump term, Ukrainian refugees in Britain and an American bank collapse. Bethany's implant storyline is its most dated idea, and the finale is too tidy to believe. Its refugee storyline, ending in an overcrowded boat in the Channel, is the hardest hour here. It's the best match for the film's politics.
Alex Rivera's film is about a border that lets labour through and keeps bodies out. It's stiff as drama and sharp as economics, and its idea that the US gets the work without the worker is already visible in remote-assisted robots. Choose it if you came for the machinery of the border rather than the chase.
A drought thriller in which the western states close their borders to Texan refugees and fight over a river with paper. The characters are action-movie types, and it scores 5.9. It's included for its politics, which have turned out to be closer to reporting than fiction.
Is Children of Men set in 2027?
Yes. Cuarón sets the film in 2027, and our review of it is titled "Next Year in Bexhill". The film opens with news of the death of Baby Diego, the youngest person on Earth, at 18.
Is global infertility a real risk?
Not on any current path, according to our ledger, which marks it FAR. One large meta-analysis found sperm concentration fell by about half between 1973 and 2018. Falling birth rates today come mostly from people choosing to have fewer children. The UN expects the world's population to peak in the mid-2080s and then decline slowly.
Did Britain really build camps for asylum seekers?
Not like the film's. Our ledger records the Illegal Migration Act 2023, the Bibby Stockholm barge in Dorset from August 2023 to November 2024, and the Supreme Court's ruling against the Rwanda plan in November 2023. It's detention and offshore removal as policy, not machine guns on the promenade.
Is there a similar film or series?
For the closest political match, see Years and Years above. For a wider list with the same hope, see hopeful sci-fi and sci-fi about borders and migration.