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Private Notes
Zac & Mac’s “Similo” gives us a glimpse into a future that offers robots as romantic partners.
Though these robots look the part, this shorts demonstrates that they can’t play it. This is what a woman discovers when she replaces her diseased lover with a perfectly compliant version of him. As desperate as she is to love this perfect vision of him, their relationship still falls apart without his human passion and flaws.
Ariel Martin’s “iMom” takes our culture’s habit of “other-mothering” and scrutinizes it with terrifying accuracy. Artificial intelligence has allowed parents of the future to hand the responsibility of caring for children to robot maids called “iMoms.”
Does happiness lie in the past or in the future?
Mark Slutsky's sci-fi short film “The Decelerators” explores what happens when a group of ambitious friends create a machine that allows its user to linger forever in a moment of happiness. As they each take turns removing themselves from the stream of time, they quickly realize that without each other they will run out of opportunities to use the machine.
It’s us or them.
This is the dark conclusion that humans have reached in David Karlak’s short film “Rise.” In the near future, robots have developed advanced emotional sophistication and their human creators don’t like it. What should have been a simple and violent extermination of artificial life proves harder when a captured robot demonstrates that the human aggressors are biting off more than they can chew.
Our team loves the short for its impressive visual effects and character driven story. The late Star Trek actor Anton Yelchin delivers an especially strong performance that gets viewers to sympathize with the plight of a creation that is no longer wanted by its creator.
David Karlak’s “The Candidate” explores what happens when the dark thoughts in the back of our minds are given a voice and worse — power. The story follows a secret society whose purpose is to find people who don’t deserve to live and to kill them with their thoughts. The tension between the pessimistic protagonist and the liaison of the secret society comes to a head in a riveting twist.
The Candidate’s dark narrative is a dead ringer for “American Psycho” and would makes its predecessor proud. 20 minutes is longer than most short films run for but our team promises that after the short’s thrilling opening scene, you won’t be able to stop watching.
Capitalism and justice are ugly partners.
That’s the thesis of K-Michel Parandi’s “From the Future with Love.” This bleak short film explores a world where police now work for privatized agencies that offer different levels of protection depending on how much you pay.
It quickly becomes evident that this is a turn for the future’s worst as these agencies resemble gangsters, each with their own turf and “services.” After mistreating a civilian with low coverage, three cops become the victim of the system they perpetuate. Our team calls this short required viewing for its dramatic and prescient message about the state of our justice system.
A life sentence regardless of the crime. A destitute Earth stricken with hunger and crime. A planet where the smallest of infractions can result in the gravest of consequences. Tyson Johnston’s LUNAR makes the last frontier a one-way ticket to a hellish nightmare for Earth’s convicts they can no longer support.
Taken from their homes to the Lunar penitentiary, these men with a penchant for breaking the law find themselves on a moon that thrives of the absence of justice. The new wild west, where there is no law and their fate is determined at the hands of a government where there’s no one to account for their actions.
But one man may have found a way for their voices to be heard. A way to escape and tell the people of his home planet of the atrocities they’ve been subject to. A way to seek justice for the harrowing sentence he’s been dealt and if justice can’t be found, revenge.
R’Ha, directed by Kaleb Lechowski, is a fight for survival in a solar system where no one can be trusted. A civil war started by subversives they could have never seen coming. A group of fighters, relentless in their quest to protect their planets will do everything in their power to emerge the victorious underdog against an enemy that appears to always be two steps ahead.
This short leaves you on edge as the future of the guardians of space grows dim in the afterburner of the spacecraft that may lead their enemy right to them. The subtle ending shows a scene so seemingly benign it’ll hit you even harder when you realize the implications of it.
A battle of massive machines. Bullets ricocheting, metal mashing, glass shattering, buildings crumbling. Stuck right in the middle of chaos with no explanation. But no explanation is needed. Liam Murphy’s No-A communicates everything we need to know about its main characters through wordless action. The end result is an empathetic and poignant short fueled by a robot’s love for its creator and its willingness to pay the ultimate sacrifice to save this girl from harm.
An extraordinary display of compelling characters who grow on you in monumental strides in the span of a few minutes. No-A is a fragmented story filled with uncertainty, but there is one thing you can be sure of: you will finish this short wanting more.
Francesco Calabrese’s short “I Killer” explores what happens when you pick the wrong crowd to fit in with. The short follows two young boys as they follow through with a terrifying gang initiation process. Without giving away the ending one boy gets in at the other’s expense. You’ll have to see for yourself how this heart wrenching short ends.
After finding himself in a wrecked taxi, Evan tries to figure out the pieces of the puzzle, while dealing with a dangerous threat, in a seemingly deserted city.
Francesco Calabrese’s “Lovely Monster” narrates the unique challenges faced by a girl with an incurable and frightening condition. The simple short follows a documentary crew as they interview various figures in her life: classmates, her mother, a bully, and of course herself. No one should be alone but you might change your mind after watching where the story goes.
That’s the starting premise of Collin Davis’s “Telescope.” This thoughtfully crafted short film follows a brave cosmic archaeologist as he travels back in time to capture photos of the once vibrant planet. As he travels further back in time, we learn that the galaxy and time he came from has a lifeless Earth with no organic life left on its surface. It’s hard to finish the film without feeling nostalgia for an Earth that is being taken for granted.
9 Minutes is a tense science fiction thriller set in the middle of the desert. As this darkly atmospheric short progresses, this man and his dog are paid by a visit by unwelcome extraterrestrial guests. The encounter is sudden and terrifying. When the man comes to, he is unnerved by the footage captured by his phone.
The man tries to go about his business and move on but there is something irreversibly wrong with his dog after the encounter.
Paris, 2020.
A beautiful couple, a city over-saturated by holograms and digital stream.
A polaroid camera.
Tomorrow will never be the same.
"Lost Memories 2.0" is the follow-up to filmmaker Francois Ferracci's other short "Lost Memories".
The "Cloud" collapsed and destroyed all the digital data in the world a few years ago in an electromagnetic storm. Since that moment, the world has been slowly recovering. A.D. is now A.C. ("After Cloud.") In an ultra-connected world filled with hyper connected people, how do you find your one true love, who remains off-line ?
A chance encounter proves fateful for 2 robots mining on a desolate planet.
When colleagues Laura and Grady have an impulsive fling on a business trip, they decide it might be for the best if it all just never happened.
“Never Happened is set in a world much like our own, just a little different. A world in which we can manipulate our thoughts, our lives, just a little more than we already can. The technology in the film is fictional, but in many ways, I think we have always applied the same principles to the way we view our lives, the way we selectively tell ourselves our own stories.” – Mark Slutsky, Director
Strings is an action short about a captive woman who is kept sedated for a very good reason. She is extremely valuable, and the battle to free her will determine her fate.
A film based in a world where the singularity is near through the development of ANA, a management software, used to increase productivity. ANA follows the sole worker in a futuristic car manufacturing plant, as ANA tricks him into given her total control.
A stunning experiment with setting and creature effects.
A group of kids goofing off begin disappearing one by one from a locked room.
This intense short will have you wondering how much power you should give the technology you use to help run your life.
Keiichi Matsuda's "Hyper-Reality" takes a look at what life could be like for people in a world altered by augmented reality. Does the technology help your life or trap you in a lonely virtual prison full of clutter and confusion?
In the middle of nowhere in a small motel a mysterious trio’s arrival comes with strange electrical phenomena. What are they waiting for, and what will the suspicious motel owner do about it?
2nd place winner at the 2013 Sci-Fi London 48 Hour Film Challenge. Written, shot, edited and scored in less than 48 hours.The filmmakers were given a random title ("FALLING APART"), a random line of dialogue ("Fame is fleeting, baby, but legends live forever") and a random prop/action (A mug of steaming liquid - a character sniffs the hot liquid and pours it away), and then had 48 hours to write a script with those elements, shoot it, edit it, grade it, score it, sound design it, export it and deliver it in person at the London BFI. A stunning result that DUST is honored to present here.
In a sparse post-apocalyptic world a man's grief leads him on a path towards danger and disappointment.
The world is dead. Its only inhabitants are loners and wanderers, people whose purposes in life remain unfulfilled. They linger on in an empty and bleak world. Some embrace the anarchy, while others continue to seek resolution and meaning. The Man is one of these. His search is for his family, a wife and son he lost so long ago that he no longer remembers the circumstances of their disappearance. All he knows is that he must find them, no matter the cost. It is the sole reason for his survival. When he comes upon a weird carnival of wandering strangers, he stops looking only for a place to rest and continue on his way. But then the strangers put on a show for their new guest, and the Man sees someone very familiar… Has he finally found what he seeks? Or is he so accustomed to self-deception that he can no longer recognize the face of the woman he once loved?
In a diverse eco-system of mollusc like creatures, a late devoted scientist of these life forms has passed his life’s work on to his daughter, along with his most prized discovery.
‘The Fisherman’ is an animated story set in a neo-tokyo cityscape where electricity is a source of life for a diverse eco-system of mollusc like creatures. A late devoted scientist of these life forms has passed his life’s work on to his daughter, along with one part of his most prized catch. The other part, a mystical electric fish, has eluded him his entire life. An opportune discovery of this rare creature by a human inhabitant instigates an unusual mating ceremony, spawning a surge of life that traverses the gap between this life and the next.
"The Fisherman" By Luke Saunders.
In a future where sex kills and interaction between men and women is strictly regulated what will people risk to feel the pleasure of real intimate human contact?
"Urbance" by Joel dos Reis Viegas & Sebastien Larroude have created a dystopian world where a disease has caused sex to be fatal. Can people really deny their urges?
This animated short is a pilot that was the result of a successful Kickstarter campaign.
Four soldiers enter a building filled with terrifying creatures to fix faulty equipment, but will any of them make it out alive? "State Zero" by Andrée Wallin
Knowing that the horror exists doesn't make it any easier to deal with.
An astronaut survives falling to an unknown planet after a nearly fatal crash but he's not the only one there. Is he in some sort of crazy halucination or did he really awaken next to his own dead body?
("Grounded" by Kevin Margo)
As a spiritual war is brewing one woman must fight to save her sister's soul.
("The Gate" by Kellie Madison)
If time travel became possible and you could go back to leave yourself a message, what would that message be?
Is there a scientific path to god?
Two film students set out to document their attempt to use science to communicate with god. Have their experiments made them crazy or have they truly found the answer?
("The Brain Hack" by Joseph White)
Some fears are too close to home.
A young girl must find the strength to face the demon that haunts her.
("Blood Ties" by Simon Pannetrat, Marion Louw, Thomas Ricquier, and Sophie Kavouridis)
