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Trailer for the Papers, Please film adaptation welcomes you to Arstotzka

Lucas Pope’s indie classic Papers, Please is getting a short film, and the final trailer is out now. Find out what Grestin Checkpoint looks like on film!

When it comes to film adaptations of video games, there’s two truths. One, they’re almost all based on AAA games, the whales and the stalwarts of the industry that bring in all the glitz, glamour and gold. Two, they’re all kind of terrible. The adaptation of the indie border checkpoint simulator Papers, Please is on its way though, and it might just show those multi-million-dollar projects what for.

Papers, Please is being adapted into a short film with a release date set for sometime in 2018. It’s directed by Russian indie director Nikita Ordynskiy, and stars veteran actor Igor Savochkin, who was also in the Oscar-nominated film Leviathan. The original game’s creator Lucas Pope has not only given his approval to the project, but he has been involved in it from its earliest planning stages.

It’s got everything you might expect from a film based on Papers, Please: the communist-dystopian scenes of Arstotzka as our hero makes his way to the infamous Grestin Checkpoint, art design that perfectly captures the period look, and lots of denied stamps. Expect lots of papers to be shuffled around, and for Savochkin’s character to be confronted with hard decisions.

For more information on the film, check out the official Facebook page, which is chock full of updates and development trivia.

Papers, Please, the original game, is available on PC, Mac, Linux and iOS. A PlayStation Vita version was announced years ago, but it hasn’t released yet.

For more bureaucratic simulation, have a look at the police management game This is the Police. Also have a look at 911 Operator, which puts you in another stressful role.