Max Pearce’s Apotheosis (co-written with Maria Sara Santoro) is an ambitious sci-fi film exploring a cyberpunk near future where genetically engineered humans and space colonies are part of the daily order. So is the socio-economic hierarchy on which natural born and genetically engineered people fall. This determines everything from employment opportunities to living standards and… Continue reading Apotheosis: A Cyberpunk Future On A Space Colony
Tag: Private
Mara: A Spin On The Selkie Folklore
As the name implies, Uisdean Murray’s Mara: The Seal Wife features a selkie as one of its two main characters. Set in a desolate Scottish island, it portrays the separate but intertwined tragedies of the selkie and her human husband, one or both destined to meet heartbreak. Three timelines populate the narrative, spanning a period… Continue reading Mara: A Spin On The Selkie Folklore
Monkey Enters Lanka: A Fable Told Through The Blending Of Elements
Saie Surendra’s Monkey Enters Lanka is as simple as its title is utilitarian. Based on the multicultural mythological tales of Ramayana, the 34-minute film is a quasi-modern take with a Sin City-esque look. Featuring a multiethnic cast, the film is narrated from the perspective of an animated Hanuman (Surendra), who has arrived in Lanka as… Continue reading Monkey Enters Lanka: A Fable Told Through The Blending Of Elements
One More Bite: The Price That Coping Mechanisms Exact
Yaxing Lin’s One More Bite explores how some slippery slopes turn into vicious cycles that do not stop unless stopped. 18 minutes long, the film centres on Jiuming, a young woman with bulimia who is also coping with an unhealthy relationship. The two feed into each other, with more factors like family added in. Jiuming… Continue reading One More Bite: The Price That Coping Mechanisms Exact
Perfect: Finding Homegrown Love Through Home Trials
Michael Heaton’s 26-minute comedy-drama Perfect is a story set in an alternate universe of the 1950s US. Here, humans grow like plants, made to order for people looking for love or children. Or both, as in the case of Patty’s neighbour. It is this neighbour, Martha (Alejandra Chavarria), who gets Patty (Samantha Clarke) to try… Continue reading Perfect: Finding Homegrown Love Through Home Trials
Santi: Grappling With Not Belonging
Harry Richards’ Santi follows a young man’s evening at a London party with his girlfriend. The lone Colombian in a crowd of English, Santi’s search for a quiet corner to answer his mother’s call finds him navigating microaggressions and the keen, unceasing self-consciousness of being different. They are not his friends. Santi (Jon Gutierrez) is… Continue reading Santi: Grappling With Not Belonging
The Atomic Spawn: Nuclear Testing and Other Things Beyond Control
Arthur Veenema’s The Atomic Spawn is a mildly humorous sci-fi about a man condemned to die as a test subject and the irradiated lizard he helps bring into existence. Set in the early 1950s US, the experiences of its Vietnamese-American protagonist as he is left to die is juxtaposed with the lizard who not only… Continue reading The Atomic Spawn: Nuclear Testing and Other Things Beyond Control
Allende: Turbulent Shame Beneath Mundane Waters
Yohanan Doron’s Allende forays into the oftentimes tense arena of repressed sexuality. The protagonist is a closeted, married man with a young child and an unborn one. The film explores the dual lives of Francisco and his wife, the latter caught up in a life of her husband’s making and neither the happier for it. … Continue reading Allende: Turbulent Shame Beneath Mundane Waters
Something Behind The Walls: Tale Of The City Slicker In A Rural Farm
Kit Wilson’s Something Behind The Walls is a horror set in 1930s Philadelphia, following the experiences of a city journalist sent to the country to cover the local folklore. With only an alcoholic doctor and a farmer for company as things go awry, Dorothy must survive the night to have any hope of getting away. … Continue reading Something Behind The Walls: Tale Of The City Slicker In A Rural Farm
Sharing: The Small Realities of Joint Custody
Mykea Perry’s Sharing examines the rarely explored loneliness of sharing custody of one’s child–or being the child of a split family. The 10-minute long film follows a mother and daughter as they make the bittersweet journey to drop off the latter at her father’s house for Christmas weekend. It is a quiet film. Melancholia seeps… Continue reading Sharing: The Small Realities of Joint Custody