its infantile state." Film scholar Jonathan Owen writes that My 20th Century is "a story of the twentieth century itself and of its bold early developments - technological, political and cultural - in all their magic, promise, and danger" and calls it a "meditation on technological enlightenment that is quite literally luminous." He says that the opening sequence is "clownish yet a little ominous" and "sets the tone for a film that will pay homage to the exuberance of early cinema while musing on the mixed blessings of a machine-dominated modernity." Enyedi, Owen writes, "is as much engaged with the unrealized possibilities of the twentieth century as with the shape it actually took" and he explains that the twins are contrary visions of the twentieth century. Owen explains that the pigeon at the end of the film "conveys the lost romance of pre-technological communication" and "recalls the failure of modern technology to realize its utopian potential and achieve genuine global and social connection." Owen identifies a number of silent films that are referenced in My 20th Century, including 1921's Orphans of the Storm (which stars Lillian and Dorothy Gish, whose names are similar to Lili and Dóra's), 1926's Now You Tell One, and 1928's The Little Match Girl. New York Times film critic Judy Stone wrote that the film is about "the dreams and possibilities that existed in the 19th century and came true in the 20th. The inventions of electric light, flight, the telephone, movies, radio, television and computer microchips are now taken for granted, but... science has also diminished our sense of the miraculous." Stone interviewed Enyedi, who stated "The people who achieved those inventions could make them because they were not afraid. They didn't believe in governments or in political ideologies, but they were still able to believe in themselves." In warning that those technologies may pose dangers to the world, Enyedi said "Our age has become overtechnical and soulless. Science has lost its moral basis. When I was planning the film, I thought about European culture -- where it is now and what will happen." My 20th Century was featured in Mark Cousins' documentary Women Make Film in the Sci-Fi and Time episodes. In the Sci-Fi episode, narrator Thandiwe Newton states that the film is "one of the most unusual in the sci-fi genre", that it goes beyond "future or parallel worlds, places of escape or