Fantasy of Companionship between Human and... - Review

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Fantasy of Companionship between Human and Inanimate is exactly what the title suggests: a story about a girl discovering the true meaning of friendship through her relationship with a stuffed toy.

The short is an animated musical film, directed by Susan Lim, Samudra Kajal Saikia, and Christina Teenz Tan, written by Lim with Thomas Shepard and animated by Saikia, about artificial intelligence, born as the soul of a baby lion reincarnated into a plush animal.

The music is engaging and very well recorded. The animation is naive and, at times, touching. However, there are a few plot holes in the story. The beginning of the film shows the soul of a lion cub leaving its body and traveling to reach its new — inanimated — body form, which brings confusion as to why the girl would need to use AI to animate a plush that already has a soul living in it...

But the passion of the directors for science is clear. Being Lim a surgeon and scientist herself, the influence of the current AI developments on her work is crystal clear. The world seems to be now facing the ultimate human challenge: how to re-learn and re-experience human relationships when technology is leading us towards a future of simulations, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence — all things people can very much experience isolated from the world, locked in the four walls of their homes.

All in all, the film sparks a profound debate on whether technology is truly bringing benefits to our society, or if it’s rather just bringing isolation.

Tutti Ne Hanno Paura is a 10-minute dramatic short film written and directed by Norman Colombo. The film shows a man standing in his dining room arguing with his mother about his dying grandfather. The man is trying to convince his mom to let him bring his grandfather to Switzerland to perform assisted suicide.

The debate that happens in that dining room is a debate that is, to this day, still ongoing in most countries in the world. Is assisted suicide a right to freedom, or is enabling it equivalent to committing murder? While the son thinks the grandfather has a right to die with dignity, the mother seems to think it would be unethical to decide on her own father’s death. That is especially true since her sick father is not in his right mind to make such a decision.

But on the other side of the wall, the old man looks rather awake and clear-headed, and as his lineage is busy discussing ethics on the other side of the wall, he takes the matter into his own hands, gets a gun, points it to his head and pulls the trigger. But much to his surprise, someone seems to have taken the bullets out of it!

So now, what seemed to be a debate on assisted suicide before, becomes the story of a woman who can’t accept her father’s illness and refuses to let him go.

The film is very well written and directed. The ending is moving, as the grandson and grandfather draw together their own destiny. 

The cinematography is gentle and brings softness to the harsh topic confronted in this film.

Despite the dramatic theme, there is nothing of a sob story in this short. The result is instead elegant and poetic, and while the writer/director doesn’t claim to know the answer to the dilemma, the film offers a personal point of view on a specific situation. Good work!

Hearing Voices is a 21-minute dramatic/experimental film written, directed, and produced by Debra Knox. The film stars Knox herself as Marie, a schizophrenic woman who struggles to find love and balance in her life.

The film is shot in black and white, which helps establish a world in two dimensions. The shapes and the shadows are there but the depth in Marie's world is missing. Just like the main character, the audience can’t figure out the difference between what’s real and what's imagined.


As a musician herself, music is a very important part of Knox’s film. A superimposition of sounds, voices, and music makes the audience enter the state of permanent confusion a person suffering from schizophrenia lives in. While the extreme close-up shots add to the confusion and mirror the sense of claustrophobia and dizziness felt by the main character, stuck in a world of her own making she can't escape from.

The film offers a reflection on how some mental health conditions can drive friends and families away. In fact, even the woman’s therapist is abandoning her, which leaves us to wonder: how can we trust our perception of the world when no one is around to help discern reality from fiction?

An unsettling short film that raises awareness of mental health.

Laurels is a 3-minute animation film directed by Mitja Manček exploring the meanings of glory and success in our modern society.

The animation short follows two men: one going on his routine hunt, and a soccer player competing for the golden cup, in a comparison between the pre-historic and the contemporary eras.

The caveman hunts and the reward is immediate: his hunger gets fed right away and his woman is in complete awe and admiration of him. A whole different story lies in the modern man — the soccer player fights for and wins the golden cup, but the beautiful cheerleader is really just there for his fame and clamor, and the trophy, well, that one can’t really be consumed, can it?

The pencil-drawn animated characters add a naïve texture to a profound subject, while the syncopated video-game sounds make the result even more quirky and ironic.

The short shows us the paradox of modern society and the delayed gratification we inflict upon ourselves. 

Why do we run infinite races to gain more money/power/prestige if what we really need was really just there all along? What do we truly need, among all the possessions and all the fabricated dreams that each of us has, to live a fulfilling and meaningful life?

A complex and elaborate theme packaged with care and a bit of sarcasm. Good work!

What Remains is a touching 25-minute documentary directed by Cristiano Esposito about the shipwreck of the Italian cargo ship Marina d’Aequa in the Atlantic waters outside of France.

During the 1981 tragedy — which happened around Christmas time — the ship sends out an emergency call right after experiencing a malfunction, but after the arrival of another ship and a few aircraft, in a matter of minutes, the ship sinks dragging all 30 men with it and leaving dozens of children without a father.

All of the crew members were from the Campania region in Italy, three of them being from the small island of Procida.

The film shows the impact that the tragedy had on the population of Procida. Specifically, it shows the impact on the children of the victims, now adults, and how they coped with the tragedy that affected their lives and the lives of their communities. 

The interviews with the now-adult children of the victims alternate with the interviews with a journalist who covered the news at the time, and the parish priest of Procida.

The short is very simple, the direction is straightforward without any frills and the editing is clean. The recording of the sound is unfortunately somewhat echoey, which is a bit distracting.

Overall, the film gives a feeling of surrender, the acceptance of a mystery that will never be solved. It especially indulges in the lack of solace from the children of the victims for not knowing really how their loved ones lived their last minutes on earth, or rather, at sea.

A moving short film about a tragedy that doesn't want to be forgotten. 

Wyvern is a 30-minute dramatic coming-of-age pilot. The episode, written by Alberto Mario D’adamo and Iuliana Tintori — who serve, respectively, as the main actor and director of the series — shows the identity struggles of four outcasts navigating their young adulthood in a ruthless Milan.

The pilot opens with a strong scene, where Melissa offers blowjobs for cash, but ends up giving way to a much more experienced Leonardo and splitting the profit.

The characters are clear from the beginning, and their respective needs are very well depicted. There are two love triangles: Samantha is in love with a girl stuck in a toxic relationship, and Melissa is secretly in love with her gay best friend Leonardo.

The actors are young and need to gain more experience, but in the context of an underground TV series, they are able to portray quite well the modern generation; full of hopes but not enough guidance.

The direction and the cinematography are both well done. The editing would benefit from a bit more pace and rhythm, as many scenes turn out a bit slow and struggle to carry the plot forward.

Overall an engaging and raw young adult drama with multifaceted characters. Good job!

Starship Troopers Deadlock is a 41-minute long sci-fi film directed by Steffen Werner, that exists in the Starship Troopers world.

Werner, a first-time director with no prior set experience and a Starship Troopers fan, started his work as a way to connect the three live-action movies of Starship Troopers with the two animated ones, adding his own story, his own characters, and his own personality to it.

Although this film praises it to be a sequel to Starship Troopers 3, it’s actually a Starship Trooper Fan Film, with no true connection whatsoever to the real saga. But this is not any ordinary fan film either. The film was shot in a 5-year span and on a zero budget, self-creating replicas of the original props, and even going as far as hiring some of the crew of the original Starship Troopers saga, which is absolutely laudable.

The props and costumes look beautiful and realistic. 

The set design might look sloppy at times, but that doesn’t necessarily hurt considering the satirical nature of the film. The acting, the writing, and the overall directing of the film are the things I feel need the most improvement as they end up fragmenting the action and cutting the flow of the film.

It’s commendable however to see Werner’s dedication to the craft, and such desire to learn and to create, considering that he also did all the camera work, editing, special effects, and sound design.

For the lovers of the genre — especially of the Starship Trooper saga — this work is a gem and will definitely be appreciated!

RIGHTEOUS SIDE OF HELL is a 58-page crime script that revolves around two siblings who reconnect after many years spent apart and whose lives get entwined in a shared dramatic fate.

The script, written by Lee Lucero, is set in the late '90s in an East Los Angeles Hispanic working-class neighborhood.

Tommy, a former Navy Seal, is aspiring to become a CIA agent and accepts his first CIA assignment, while his sister Angel, a divorced and single mother, as well as a police detective, wishes her brother could join the forces to stay close to her.

The plot is very well developed and intricate enough, the CIA, the DEA, and the police force are fighting against what initially seems like a common cause. However, nothing is what it looks like, and Tommy will soon have to make a decision that will determine both his and his sibling’s future.  

The dialogues are long and articulated, which brings lots of humanity to an otherwise very fight-oriented genre. And with new characters appearing throughout the script, the reader will stay focused and engaged up to the end.

The characters are very well described, with each having its own very distinctive personality and purpose in the story.

As with any good crime script, Lucero’s work features many plot twists and lots of suspense throughout. A script that will definitely leave the reader on the edge of their seat.

Two Point O is a short autobiographic documentary film produced and directed by David Anderson and Aaron Joshua and written by Aaron Joshua.

The documentary starts with a group of people sitting in a circle, reciting the serenity prayer at an AA meeting. Joshua, in the midst of the group, looks agitated, restless, and almost panicky. The only things that seem to ground him are the sounds of nature and the mirage of his "milky warm sweater", a metaphor for safety and comfort.

The film quality is grainy, and the sound is extremely lo-fi. The camera work is shaky and at times out-of-focus. All these qualities give the film a discordant feel, which helps convey a feeling of high disturbance. A disturbance that mirrors the uneasiness of Joshua in his journey to sobriety.

The narrator’s voice is apathetic and doesn’t leave any space for emotions. Maybe it’s by design, either way, it’s for the better, as it gives the film an unreal, unresolved feel — a life not lived but merely narrated.

There is abundant alliteration in Joshua’s poetry, which clasps with the frequent changes of images and sounds.

A 5-minute glimpse on the discomfort in the recovery from addictions. 

The Chaotic Melody of Tina is just as the title suggests: a chaotic mix of poetry and images of meth, sex, and blood. And perhaps this is just what the directors, David Anderson and Aaron Perra, tried to convey with this one-minute 43-second film.

The short is presented as a visual poem, the poem being written by Perra, with Perra doubling as the lead actor. The images are very strong, and the use of blood is disturbing and stays throughout the film.

As the main character fluctuates between the use of meth (here referenced as "Tina"), having sex, and attempting self-harm, we're left to wonder if the film is only there to provoke the audience. In fact, the picture is almost a photograph of what is true at that moment; the state of confusion the man is in. No allusions to a possible future, no hint of his past life. Just a bare and brutal image of the present.

The writing is good. However, it's overshadowed by the images and the sound. The direction and the editing could have guided the poem with a bit more harmony, that way they would have lent more clarity to the text.

Perra is also narrating the poem, but regrettably, the quality of the sound makes the narration, at times, almost unintelligible.

A raw short with a splatter aesthetic that’s definitely not for everyone.

The title states it clearly, this 3-minute documentary is about the Twin Cities Pride, the annual celebration in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. The event never took place in 2020, and this film shows the impact of that on the local LGBTQ+ community.

The community is here represented by one man, dressed in a black t-shirt and dark shorts, wandering around Minneapolis in the middle of the pandemic, just to find all the bars, clubs, and venues, closed and empty.

The shots of the deserted city are alternated with photos of the past Pride events, showing great contrast between the colors and joy of happier times with the stillness and dullness of the current events. We can feel the nostalgia in the main character’s eyes.

The film score is moody and touching, and the music performance is good and brings sadness to the whole film. The handheld camera mirrors the sense of uncertainty of the man about what will the future be like.

The director, David Anderson, doesn’t offer us a solution, or a particular perspective on this issue. A more specific point of view from the director would have been appreciated.

But works like these are ever so important because they raise awareness on how some global events have more impact — both physically and mentally — on certain communities, especially the most marginalized ones.

Good effort.

Patricia Delso Lucas is writing, directing, and producing this suggestive and thought-provoking LGBTQ short film. The film investigates the life of a middle-aged man, who lived all his life afraid of not being accepted for who he really is.

The conflict of the film is revealed right away in Al Nazemian’s narration: Oscar can’t bear to live a life full of lies anymore. He has everything but doesn’t feel anything. As much as he tries to engage with the two courtesans, he can’t seem to find any true interest in them. But when his gardener shows up, Oscar’s face lights up.

Al Nazemian’s Oscar is desperate, clinging to life but hopeless in doing so, while Riggsby Lane’s Jude is distant, calm, and rational. The dichotomy of the two characters is very powerful. There is also a contrast between the huge mansion, with its glorious gardens, and its complete emptiness. The rooms are empty, and, apart from his maid, Oscar is completely alone.

The film has a great production value, all the details are very well thought out and curated. The costumes are gorgeous and the music is evocative and gives us a sense of urgency and anguish.

Patricia Delso Lucas is directing in a way that we don’t know what is true and what is a dream. And unfortunately, Oscar’s reality is exactly that: a mix of all of his worst fears, coming to life and preventing him to love and being loved.

The reference to the doctor, together with the appearance of his mother, is especially powerful. “No doctors, I said!” shouts desperately Oscar, trying to convince Jude that he isn’t sick. We can only imagine that his mother might have attempted to convert him early on in his life, a detrimental practice that regrettably originated precisely in the 19th century.

The film is powerful, terribly sad, and very true at the same time. We wonder if things have really changed since the 19th century for the LGBTQ communities and if it will ever be acceptable to find beauty in everyone, despite their sex

Girl on the Ledge follows a young woman, Ana Bauman, who searches for the meaning of life through her own art.

The feature film directed by Paul Arthur Rothman revolves around Ana, a young and promising photographer, whose life was drained by finding the love of her life, and a successful job, too early in her life. She starts obsessing about finding her own truth and creating the most meaningful work possible.

Her husband, an older photographer, seems to be better at handling the truth of his past failures than she is, so when he challenges both to finally create the life they were meant to live, while Harry flourishes in becoming a painter — and finds a new muse too — Ana gets lost in a spiral of neglect, lack of self-esteem, and abandonment.

Ana is now fixated, desperate for seeking the truth behind others, but gets lost in looking at her own truth. Maybe Ana is looking for something that wasn’t there in the first place?

Young Ana opens and closes the film, with images of her, a young girl in a flowy dress, standing by the ledge of a building, making her look like she’s going to jump off. Almost like a bird in captivity ready to fly away. 

Or maybe young Ana is there to warn older Ana that something will go terribly wrong in her life?

The acting is believable, Irina Abraham has the extremely difficult task of carrying the whole movie on her bare shoulders, and she does a good job. She is also adequately detached to the text, which makes her character look concerning enough without being dramatic. Pascal Yen-Pfister, who plays Harry Bauman, is perfectly cast and a very strong actor.

The film is enjoyable and pleasant to watch, despite the dramatic topics discussed. It raises many questions, especially on the role of others when a fragile soul such as Ana’s gets lost and can’t find her way back. Should her friends and her ex husband have been there for her more? Or was her abandonment justified by the fact that she is the one who ultimately refused everybody’s help?

The direction is experienced and well executed, the cinematography alternates long closeups to more dynamic shots, which help transition between Ana's thoughts and the alienating surroundings she lives in. 

On an aesthetic note, both makeup and wardrobe could have been more eclectic, considering that both Ana and Harry were living in the fashion world after all. It would have been nice to see a comprehensive transformation in Ana's presence — including her style and her hair — and not only a change in the paleness of her face and the thinness of her figure, which was almost too subtle and difficult to trace at times.

All things considered, a powerful and touching work. This film was unfortunately released posthumously, as the director sadly passed away in 2018, but I believe it has been brilliantly taken over by his son Ben Rothman, who is also the producer of the film. 

Here, father and son prove to have been a well-oiled machine in this beautiful and earnest piece.

A world turned around is a provoking 1-minute experimental film by Johanne Chagnon, where men are in captivity and the animals are the ones free of existence.

The film opens with a shadow of a body performing an agonizing dance behind a screen, and right away, we get this feeling of anguish. The image zooms out and the screen is now divided into 4 panels: the ground is covered with a bloody and uneven red color and left and right appears the same scene of nature: first trees, then water flowing, then moving animals.

In this film, nature is imposing, while the person is unglorified, seemingly in distress.

Humans, placed in between the two panels showing nature, and right above the red floor, almost seem to be using the stream of blood to create a fracture within nature. In fact, it is true that we reside on our planet but we aren’t following its rules, by abusing nature and creating death and devastation for our very own benefit.

It’s not by chance that the sound is mainly composed of nature sounds. It’s almost an indication that however we try to control our planet, nature will always be stronger — thus louder — than us.

But is Chagnon suggesting that justice can be achieved by enclosing human beings in a dimension that is parallel to nature, with the two never touching each other so that the former won’t be able to destroy the latter? Or is she suggesting that nature is meant to take over, leaving people behind?

The interpretation is entirely left to the audience here.

Chagnon mentions an inequitable world as her source of inspiration, and this is exactly what we are witnessing in this film: a dual world that perhaps will never find its harmony.

HUNGRY EYES is a 5-page long horror script written by Jason John Cicalese.

An original and straightforward story, written entirely with one voice, the old man’s. As a matter of fact, the two other characters, two young kids gagged and tied to chairs, don’t have a voice at all, as they are the mere object of the man’s opto-culinary quest.

Is being young and at the prime of their lives what they’re truly guilty of?

It’s not a chance that the old man, described as “heavy-set” and “balding”, is the one wanting to deprive the teenagers of their sight, the most important sense in a society that rewards appearance and youthfulness.

A social criticism that exposes the neglect of older people, who spend their whole lives being productive and making a name for themselves, only to find themselves close to retirement, with nothing more than a handful of memories.

The script has a great texture, it’s cooked in a deep message and it’s seasoned with cruel horror scenes: a perfect recipe, remarkably executed!

(Corona) Viral Monologues by Claire Chubbuck is a 50-minute experimental film that follows the emotional journey of 30 characters dealing with the surge of the pandemic in what looks like a mix between scripted film and documentary.

This artistic expression, shot in isolation, is structured along the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

A powerful performance – at times overacted, at times underacted – that displays the emotional rollercoaster of going through a traumatic and cathartic event. What’s interesting is to see how, little by little, their own past comes back to haunt them and how they’re now left to face it, whether it’s a drinking problem, a broken relationship with their mother, or an eating disorder.

The soundtrack of this film is stripped-down, the music is only used when truly essential which makes the picture feel light and airy, while the editing mixes up voices with faces they don’t belong to, splits sentences in half, and conveys an overall sense of psychological confusion.

As this touching film comes to an end we are left to feel – yes – empathy for the characters, but also comfort in knowing we are all in this together.