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The film is partially presented in a [[found footage (film technique)|found footage]] format by featuring fictional interviews, news footage, and video from surveillance cameras. The story, which explores themes of [[humanity (virtue)|humanity]], [[xenophobia]] and [[social segregation]], begins in an [[alternate history|alternate]] 1982, when an alien spaceship appears over [[Johannesburg, South Africa]]. When a population of sick and malnourished insectoid aliens is discovered on the ship, the South African government confines them to an internment camp called District 9. Twenty years later, during the government's relocation of the aliens to another camp, one of the confined aliens named Christopher Johnson, who is about to try to escape from Earth with his son and return home, crosses paths with a bureaucrat named Wikus van de Merwe leading the relocation. The title and premise of ''District 9'' were inspired by events in [[Cape Town]]'s [[District Six]], during the [[South Africa under apartheid|apartheid]] era.
A [[viral marketing]] campaign for the film began in 2008 at [[San Diego Comic-Con]], while the theatrical trailer debuted in July 2009. ''District 9'' had its World Premiere on 23 July 23, 2009 at San Diego Comic-Con.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Editors |first1=Scifi Scoop |title=
==Plot==
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Following unrest between the aliens and locals, the government hires Multinational United (MNU), a giant weapons manufacturer, to relocate the aliens to a new camp outside the city. Piet Smit, an MNU executive, appoints MNU employee and his son-in-law, Wikus van de Merwe, to lead the relocation. Meanwhile, three aliens, Christopher Johnson, his young son CJ, and his friend Paul, search a District 9 garbage dump for alien fuel in Prawn technology, which Christopher has had them spend the last twenty years synthesizing enough of to enact his plan. They finally finish in Paul's shack as the relocation begins, but when Wikus comes to the shack to serve Paul a notice, he finds the hidden container with the fuel and accidentally sprays some of it in his face while confiscating it. Koobus Venter, a cruel MNU mercenary, kills Paul.
Wikus begins mutating into a Prawn, starting with his left arm injured after the fuel exposure. He is immediately taken to the brutal MNU lab, where researchers discover his chimeric DNA grants him the ability to operate Prawn weaponry, which is biologically restricted for them. Wanting to capture this human/alien hybridity before Wikus fully transforms, Smit orders Wikus' body to be [[vivisect
Wikus takes refuge in District 9, finding Christopher and the spaceship's concealed command module [[shuttlecraft|dropship]] underneath his house. Christopher explains to Wikus the confiscated fuel is crucial to his plan of reactivating the dropship, and if he can get them in the dropship to the mothership, he can cure Wikus. Wikus attempts to acquire weapons from the District 9 Nigerian arms dealer Obesandjo, who wants to eat Wikus's alien arm to gain alien abilities. Wikus, however, seizes an alien weapon and escapes.
Wikus and Christopher force their way through MNU to the lab and retrieve the fuel. However, after seeing the barbarous experiments MNU has performed on his people in the lab{{emdash}}including a dissected Paul{{emdash}}Christopher tells Wikus he must return home as fast as possible for help and cannot undo
Meanwhile, CJ, remaining hidden in the dropship, remotely activates the mothership and a large, alien, mechanized battle suit in Obesandjo's base. The suit guns down the Nigerians, and Wikus enters the suit and rescues Christopher from the mercenaries. Heading to the dropship, the two come under heavy fire, and Wikus stays behind to fend off the mercenaries, buying time for Christopher, who promises to return after three years and heal Wikus, to leave. After all of the other mercenaries are killed, Venter finally cripples the suit and is about to execute Wikus when slum Prawns attack and dismember him alive. Christopher makes it into the dropship with CJ, and the dropship is levitated via a [[tractor beam]] back into the mothership, which leaves Earth.
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Doctor Shohini Chauduri wrote that ''District 9'' even echoes apartheid in its title, as it is reminiscent "of [[District Six|District 6]] in Cape Town, declared a whites-only area under the Group Areas Act". She also discusses how the wide shots used in ''District 9'' strongly emphasize the idea of exclusion under apartheid. The separation of people and "prawns" into human and non-human zones marks South Africa's social divisions.<ref>{{cite web | first= Shohini |last= Chaudhuri | url= https://qmplus.qmul.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/661999/mod_resource/content/1/Chaudhuri%2C%20Uninvited%20visitors.pdf | title= Cinema of the Dark Side | archiveurl= https://web.archive.org/web/20180218210844/https://qmplus.qmul.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/661999/mod_resource/content/1/Chaudhuri%2C%20Uninvited%20visitors.pdf |archivedate=18 February 2018 | year= 2014 | work= Uninvited Visitors | pages= 135–143| accessdate=}}</ref>
The film emphasizes the irony of Wikus and the impact of his experiences on his personality, which shows him becoming more humane as he becomes less biologically human. The film uses his story to pose the question of humanity as the "prawn" characters in the film are shown to be kinder to Wikus than the actual humans are as he undergoes his transformation. The film also features the portrayal of Nigerian Arms dealers, provoking thought on conflict between marginalized communities.
Themes of [[racism]] and [[xenophobia]] are shown in the form of [[speciesism]]. Used to describe the aliens, the word "prawn" is a reference to the [[Parktown prawn]], a [[Anostostomatidae|king cricket]] species considered a pest in South Africa.<ref name="radiointerview">{{Cite web |url=http://www.highveld.co.za/thelounge/gallery/event.asp?id=565 |title=Interview with Neill Blomkamp on the Highveld Stereo 94.7 radio station |date=19 August 2009 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090830194354/http://www.highveld.co.za/thelounge/gallery/event.asp?id=565 |archive-date=30 August 2009 |df=dmy-all}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Sermon|first1=Sarah|title=Close Encounters of the Invasive Kind: Imperial History in Selected British Novels of Alien-encounter Science Fiction After World War II|date=30 September 2013|publisher=LIT Verlag|location=Germany|isbn=978-3643903914|page=66|edition=1st}}</ref> Copley has said that the theme is not intended to be the main focus of the work, but can work at a subconscious level even if it is not noticed. The racism in the film is portrayed on an institutional level, as despite the brutality towards the aliens by MNU exposed to the public they are still relocated as originally planned.
Duane Dudek of the ''Journal Sentinel'' wrote that "The result is an action film about xenophobia, in which all races of humans are united in their dislike and mistrust of an insect-like species".<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.jsonline.com/entertainment/movies/53074407.html |title='District 9' social theme isn't so alien – JSOnline |last=Dudek |first=Duane |date=13 August 2009 |work=[[Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]] |publisher=Milwaukee Journal Sentinel |access-date=6 September 2010 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100723064150/http://www.jsonline.com/entertainment/movies/53074407.html |archive-date=23 July 2010 |df=dmy-all}}</ref>
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In 2013, the film was one of several discussed by [[David Sirota]] in ''[[Salon (website)|Salon.com]]'' in an article concerning [[White savior narrative in film|white savior narratives in film]].<ref name="sirota">{{cite news |last=Sirota |first=David |url= http://www.salon.com/2013/02/21/oscar_loves_a_white_savior/ |title=Oscar loves a white savior |work=[[Salon.com]] |date=21 February 2013 |access-date=14 May 2014 |url-status= live |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20140410110258/http://www.salon.com/2013/02/21/oscar_loves_a_white_savior/ |archive-date=10 April 2014 |df=dmy-all}}</ref>
Alexandra Heller Nicholas discusses Wikus's self-identity in ''District 9'' as problematic due to him being a white man and the hero of the film. Nicholas argues that a white saviour "disempowers the
It has been argued<ref>{{cite journal |id={{Project MUSE|760792}} |last1=Brophy |first1=Gregory |last2=Malley |first2=Shawn |title=Unsettling pedagogy: Sifting the postcolonial midden heaps of Neill Blomkamp's District 9 |journal=Science Fiction Film and Television |date=2020 |volume=13 |issue=2 |pages=199–222 |doi=10.3828/sfftv.2020.11 |s2cid=225568302 }}</ref> that Wikus's grotesque transformation is indicative of the fact that "While biological discourses of racial subhumanity might have been expunged from public knowledges in the postapartheid nation, contemporary South Africa continues to be structured according to the binary that undergirds such narratives."<ref>{{cite journal |id={{Project MUSE|686934}} |last1=Duncan |first1=Rebecca |title=From Cheap Labour to surplus humanity: World-ecology and the postapartheid speculative in Neill Blomkamp's District 9 |journal=Science Fiction Film and Television |date=2018 |volume=11 |issue=1 |pages=45–72 |doi=10.3828/sfftv.2018.7 |s2cid=193984726 }}</ref>
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On August 19, 2022, Sharlto Copley said in an interview that ''District 10'' was still in discussions; that both he and Blomkamp had written drafts for it, and that the film would probably have a chance once Blomkamp was done shooting ''[[Gran Turismo (film)|Gran Turismo]].''<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://movieweb.com/district-10-gets-another-promising-update-from-sharlto-copley|title=Sharlto Copley - District 10|website=movieweb.com|date=18 August 2022|language=en|access-date=2022-11-14|archive-date=14 November 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221114145254/https://movieweb.com/district-10-gets-another-promising-update-from-sharlto-copley/|url-status=live}}</ref>
In August 2023, Blomkamp was asked about a District 9 sequel while promoting Gran Turismo and hinted at the project being shelved indefinitely. "I
==See also==
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