Brazil

Pneumatic tubes, ducts, and information systems that nobody can repair legally.

Sam Lowry processes forms at the Ministry of Information and declines a promotion, because the job is comfortable and requires nothing. The department's entire output is paperwork correcting the consequences of its own earlier paperwork, including the one typographical error that kills a man.

Allocated labour — A system decides what you will do, and people comply — sometimes willingly.

No artificial intelligence anywhere in it, and the best film in the catalogue on what a working day looks like when the work has stopped meaning anything. It arrived here from a list of scientists' favourites, not a reading list.