The human spaceflight section of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey occurs in the year 2001.
The date is built into the film’s title and places its futuristic story in a specific imagined era. The narrative moves from prehistoric humanity to a technologically advanced period in which humans travel to space and investigate a mysterious signal.
The film premiered in 1968, so its vision of 2001 was speculative rather than documentary. Its spacecraft, computers, video communications, and orbital travel helped make the future setting feel unusually concrete to contemporary audiences.
The story later moves beyond its initial 2001 setting. Its sequel, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, uses a later date and continues the story of the Discovery spacecraft and the enigmatic computer HAL 9000.