No Matter the Cost: The Fragility of Hope in Children of Men (2006)

It was dark out, with no light on the street. Dumpster fires highlighted the filth of the rundown sidewalk. Insurgents and refugee groups hid in the corners of towering buildings. Theo and Kee rushed to a safehouse on a makeshift coach. Theo helped Kee lay down on a flat plank. Amid all the unrest outside, the safehouse fell silent. Theo anticipated. The world, unknowingly, anticipated too: a baby was born for the first time in 18 years. Now everything had to be done to protect the baby. No matter the cost.

The world is aging—and it might never go back. In Alfonso Cuarón’s 2006 film Children of Men, global order collapses after a sudden infertility crisis strikes in 2009. The United States and every other superpower fell. Every superpower except the United Kingdom, which, in an attempt to stay afloat and preserve order, transforms into a fascistic police state. With refugees arriving in the UK, the government chooses to criminalize immigration.

Although humanity will not be facing a population crisis anytime soon, with the global population now at eight billion, the spread of immigration crises and resurgence of fascism worldwide gives us anything but hope. Yet Children of Men reminds us that, in the face of hardship and perhaps even darker days ahead, hope—however delicate—is something that must be sustained through sacrifice.

For much of the film, Theo is passive and hopeless. He is the kind of guy who retreats into familiarity and comfort when confronted with hardship. Ironic, considering he was once an activist, driven to speak out for the marginalized and oppressed. But Theo has every right to be hopeless: years before the infertility crisis, he lost his son in a flu pandemic. Driven only by mere survival, he takes on the task of escorting a girl for money—unaware that she is pregnant. When Theo realizes she is, his motivation shifts. Unusual for a protagonist, Theo dies, reminding us that hope is not preserved through wishful thinking, but sacrifice. He protects the baby—humanity’s last hope—with his life, recognizing it as more important than his own survival.

Beyond Theo’s arc, Children of Men’s prediction of the future of immigration is unsettlingly accurate. Today, refugee crises often emerge from war, famine, and societal collapse. Since 2011, over 14 million Syrians have been displaced by a civil war (USA for UNHCR, 2025). Although many European countries have opened their borders and established asylum programs in response, the opposite is true in the film’s UK. Refugees are arrested, persecuted, and executed— deemed as an existential threat to society’s stability. Critics of refugee programs today often argue that Europe is facing a “crisis” because economies cannot sustain the sudden surge of immigrants. But the economic argument against providing refuge is not as strong as the moral one in favor of it. Providing safety to refugees is not a Sisyphean burden but an opportunity to uphold humanity. Like Theo, the necessary sacrifices along the way are what sustain hope for everyone.

Theo’s friend Jasper is another who embodies sacrifice. His wife, once outspoken against the government’s handling of the infertility crisis, was tortured until she entered into a vegetative state. Even as Jasper numbs himself with drugs, he preserves hope daily by caring for her—a fragile, quiet act of sacrifice. Later, Jasper sacrifices himself to cover Theo and Kee’s track, an act of courage that echoes Theo’s own.

Perhaps Jasper’s sacrifice carries another meaning, too. Cuarón wants us to see that perseverance and valor are essential not only for preserving hope, but also for resisting fascism. The film’s xenophobia toward refugees mirrors the rise of nationalism and demonization of political “out-groups” in the real world. Jasper and Theo’s actions are rebellions against this vile, uniquely-British fascism in the film; the Socialist and Democrat Group’s actions are similarly rebellions against the resurgence of neo-Nazism in Europe. Theo and Jasper’s sacrifices matter because they did the right thing. Because they recognized the fragility of hope and acted to preserve it. And because the Socialist and Democrat Group recognized the fragility of the hope for freedom and equality, too, and actively campaigned across Europe to preserve it. 

Hope is not merely a state of mind or, for lack of a better word, a “self-fulfilling prophecy.” It is brittle, sustained only through sacrifice. Children of Men cautions us about this fragility, reminding us of the sacrifices required to keep hope alive in a world that seems determined to extinguish it. And Children of Men doesn’t promise that hope will prevail. It insists instead that hope survives only if we choose to protect it—no matter the cost—when it’s no longer dark out.