Avatar is a 2009 film directed by James Cameron.
Avatar (2009 film) . The film is set in the mid-22nd century , when humans are colonizing Pandora , a lush habitable moon of a gas giant in the Alpha Centauri star system , in order to mine the mineral unobtanium , a room-temperature superconductor . In the 2009 science fiction film Avatar , director James Cameron conceived a fictional universe in which humans seek to mine unobtanium on the fictional exoplanetary moon , Pandora .