Let's Start Over - Review

Johanne Chagnon is back with another bony, bloody, and disturbing short film!

Scraggliness is the name of the 6-minute-long experimental short, which explores pain and suffering through the movement of human bodies.

At first, the person — represented as a shadow — seems to be computer generated, but then the shadow looks more like an edited footage of an actual person. The footage looks like it’s projected on a wall made of white fur, where shadows of thin trees accompany the person, who is moving their arms and legs like thin branches in the wind.

The theme of the connection between nature, animals, and humans is recurring in Chagnon’s work. The body, the blood, the nature, all exist at the same time and are almost interchangeable. Is the human wearing an animal’s fur, or is nature holding the human captive?

The sounds are extremely distressing, sounds of cracked bones follow along the 6-minute visuals creating anguish and uneasiness in the spectator.

The final cut is in black and white, with the only exception of blood — dark red — at the end, coming out of the person. Representing at times life, at times death, blood always brings a change of state in living beings and restitution to nature.

A short film full of profound meanings, that explores life, death, and the contraposition between growth and deterioration. 

I WONDER,YES I CONFESS, I WONDER is a 10-minute experimental film shot in black and white, and co-directed by Antonia Economou and Christos Adrianopoulos.

The film opens with a mesmerizing scene showing a replicated series of corporate men sitting cross-legged in the desert, hiding behind open newspapers. Each man is sitting next to a little dirt mount. There is no dialogue, only the sound of crumpling newspapers and mumbling people.

A naked woman rises from behind the mountain.

The rest of the film features a melting pot of bodies, feet, hands, and faces, all seasoned with dry dirt and creepy sounds.

The short film uses strong visual images to address the many contradictions in modern society, in particular, the opposition between the natural state of living and the social constructs we all live by.

It raises concern over the dichotomy of the contemporary human being, living lives surrounded by people yet filled with loneliness and isolation.

The editing is very well done. The string of images and extreme close-ups, the replicated images of men, the visual succession of pieces of flesh, and rapid movements make the film very engaging.

I especially liked the use of sound. At times surprising the audience with outbursts of laughter, at times nonexistent (like when the mouth is moving but no words come out), the sound (or lack of it) makes this film disturbing enough to keep our minds slightly distressed.

A very good work indeed, visually appealing, and with a very profound message.

PARATEICHION is a 120-page script written by Oleg Bazylewicz. The genre is historical epic drama, and it recounts the facts preceding the fall of Constantinople, in 1453.

The script starts in Bulgaria in 1453. Nestor, a humble man and son of a blacksmith, is wounded and unconscious, sitting by his cart and surrounded by dead bodies. Anna, a kind noblewoman, tries to take care of his wounds as she is helped by monks. 

Despite their different upbringings, Anna and Nestor have been friends since they were children, growing up in Kyiv. Anna would educate Nestor about the New Testament and teach him how to scribe.

Nestor is now 17 years old and he is recruited by Metropolitan Isidore to travel to Italy due to his language fluency, his classical training, and his wit. Anna sends Nestor off, as they both exchange sentimental gifts.

In the context of the Fall of Constantinople, the script revisits all the events, political and personal, that the two young sweethearts will go through during the years preceding 1453.

The work and effort Bazylewicz put into the research of Byzantine and Ottoman traditions and culture is admirable. No details are spared, and the script is soaked with historical moments and conversations.

The writing is dense, informative, and flows very well. The dialogues are at times verbose, which makes the scenes feel a bit longer than they should. However, the pace is fast and the plot carries on nicely from the beginning to the end, and a 120-page epic battle script doesn't feel like a lot.

The time jumps are a bit tricky, the storyline is non-linear, and almost every other scene figures a time jump. The script spans over 20 years, with scenes from 1437, and 1439, up to 1453, and then back to 1430. However, with today’s technology, being able to visually represent time in a fluid and clear way for an audience shouldn’t represent a problem, but rather a light production challenge.

The battles and the amount of war paraphernalia allow lots of room for visual and artistic exploration during a possible pre-production phase.

Not a lot of films have depicted the Byzantine-Ottoman wars, and with the recent rise in war biopics in the film industry, a script like this would surely make a profitable production.

The Eve is a suspenseful thriller-horror short written and directed by Luca Machnich that takes place on Christmas Eve.

8-year-old Simon is adopted and an only child. His adoptive parents are possessive and manipulative and they are terrified by the idea that Simon might leave them. For that reason, they isolate him from other people and kids and smother him in gifts. Lonely Simon finds refuge in his wish to meet Santa Claus and in his desire to take over his toy factory, transform it into an army of soldiers, and revenge the “disenchanted kids” who are treated poorly by the “mean adults”.

The suspense build-up is well done, and there are a lot of elements to keep the attention of the audience high: the kid being isolated by his parents and we’re not exactly sure why — there is a woman who is threatening to take the child away, probably Simon’s birth mother  — the parents plan to come forward, on Christmas Eve, about their son's biological family, and finally the actual appearance of Santa, who is really a volunteer surprising the kids by ringing on their doorbells and bringing them a gift.

The film's editing is good, there is variety in the appearance of the picture and a nice additional animated piece. The cinematography is very well done. It’s hard not to notice the few references to Hitchcock’s suspense movies, with the slow-paced tension build-up and the quirky camera angles.

However, the narrative is a bit difficult to follow, all the elements set up in the beginning are not matched at the end, resulting in the payoff being rather weak.

The film's overall theme is about giving up your childhood dreams and surviving in a cynical world, and it's explored in an original manner through a thriller-horror lens.

A good effort with a decent amount of suspense, good CGI, and a healthy dose of gore.

I/O (Input-Output) is a 26-page science fiction script written by Molly Vernon. The pilot episode of the series, Cattle, is set in a fictional near-future, where the state of Texas — as well as many others — has been invaded by mysterious creatures.

Everything seems pretty normal in the house of a NASA engineer, his wife, and his daughters. But the calm won’t last long. A huge misunderstanding led Sky, the nerd little sister, to access her dad’s laptop and complete what seemed to be an innocent video game. Little did she know, Mission I/O

Leontief Paradox was not a video game, but a software operating in real life — using the NASA KIDS CLUB video game interface, thus the confusion — developed by her dad to find out who was the entity trying to control the satellites, power grids, and stations. 

By achieving a stalemate in the video game, Sky set off a chain reaction that will soon have Texas occupied by ruthless and bloodthirsty creatures.

The first episode of the series spans three years, starting from year 1 since the occupation of Texas to year three, and it follows the two sisters, Sky and Ridley — with an ‘ey’, like the movie director — one free and living among the rebels and deserters, and the other held captive in a cattle pen by the Occupiers leader, the Cowboy.

A great obstacle created in this first episode is the fact that the SD card containing the game is locked, and only Sky’s and Ridley’s voices combined can unlock it. So if Sky wants to revert the results of the video game, the two girls have to find each other.

It’s always refreshing to read about young kids being main characters in sci-fi movies. Following the journey of tweens fighting missions way bigger than them leaves us with a feeling of overall endearment and slight adorability (on top of the adrenaline and scare from the rest of the story, of course). We are rooting for them to succeed!

It's a very well-written and engaging script. 

In the era of Stranger Things and other sci-fi/horror/thriller productions following teenagers, I can see this series becoming successful!

Nursery Rhyme of a Madman is a comedy-thriller feature film inspired by a Polish play called The Madman and The Nun.

The film revolves around Mitchel, a poet, who seems to have lost his mind and is now forced into a straitjacket and fed psychoactive drugs by two psychiatrists. The two doctors have drastically different approaches, and as both of them are busy studying the patient, the kind and lovely nurse swoops in and tries her own approach to cure the man: empathy, and eventually, love.

The writing is good, the dialogues definitely bring us back to the theatrical world, which is perfectly in tune with the old and dark manor house where the film is shot, as well as the intense topics treated.

Too bad the acting doesn’t really add a personal touch to the characters but rather makes them almost 2-dimensional, which is probably a director’s choice rather than a choice made by the single actors. However, the actors serve the purpose of the film well enough. However, the most intrusive element of the film was the sound, as the voices were highly reverberated making the dialogue quite distracting.

The overall film shows off a great production design, the costumes and the setting both reminisce about the end of the 19th century and were very well done.

And while line “2 doctors, 7 opinions” is way too relatable, the main takeaway of the film is a sensible critique of modern medicine, which tries to cure all the symptoms but isn’t always addressing the root cause of a disease.

A good effort with solid writing, which would benefit from a clearer identity.

What is happiness? This is the question the two authors, Nima Soofi and Daniel Ricardo Irias, try to answer in this feature documentary. 

The backstory of the film is briefly hinted at in the introduction. Soofi and Irias started traveling and interviewing people, but they were unable to complete their project due to the surge of the pandemic, therefore, they used the footage of interviews shot up until then, mixed videos of their personal journey and travels, to create a documentary about happiness. 

The two writers/directors travelled all over the world to gather their multifaceted interviews, from the US, to Thailand, to Mexico, and so on and so forth, and the many people interviewed bring so much complexity, richness and depth to their simple — yet so difficult — question.

The film shows the different journeys of all the people interviewed, which combined, create a macro journey in the discovery of love, acceptance, empathy and life.

 The interviews are very well shot, and the variety of landscapes, backgrounds, lifestyles and colors bring lots of value to the documentary. The film is moving and informative, and watching it will open the audience's eyes on many topics such as coming out, terminal diseases and abuses, and will show that love, self appreciation and family values are ultimately at the core of people’s happiness.

The photography of the film is gorgeous and the interviews are very well conducted. They are specific and they get straight to the point. The editing is very well done and the addition of some animation-like moments showing personal life and perspective of the two authors are an unexpected and clever touch.

A positive and refreshing documentary about what human happiness really is about.

Boy Scientist is a 2-minute 44 seconds animated music video directed by Susan Lim, Samudra Kajal Saikia, and Christina Teenz Tan about a boy scientist nourishing an unrequited love for a fellow girl scientist.

We’ve seen another music video directed by the same trio, Timeless, which combined a simple concept with a linear execution.

But in this video, there are almost too many elements. The animation fails to keep up with the storyline and ends up looking rough and bumpy, and the lyrics of the song are a bit scattered. The result is almost more informative than artistic; a sort of next-level educational video for children. 

The message too is discouraging and depressing.

The only elements that elevate the production are the well-recorded music arrangements, the nice melody, and the soft and soothing voice of the singer.

A music video that tries to overachieve, but that ultimately shows us that less is more. 

Timeless is a 3-minute 37 seconds animated music video directed by Susan Mey Lee Lim, Samudra Kajal Saikia, and Christina Teenz Tan.

The video shows a little girl, facing away from the audience, who walks through different landscapes, hand in hand with her teddy bear.

The mood of the video is nostalgic, as are the lyrics of the song. The video and the song want to speak to the child within each of us.

The video and the song are successful in reminding us of the times when it was enough to have a floor to sit on and an unanimated friend to talk to about our deepest secrets and fears.

The animator does a great job in bringing us back to that memory, the drawings are naïf and colorful, and the little girl walking facing away from us leaves us with a feeling of time that went by.

The song is very catchy, and the lyrics are insightful and suit the video very well. Ron Josef Danziger’s voice is warm and comforting.

A feel-good animation video that will make you go back in time.

DEAD DREAMS FALLING is no common music video. By showing a connection that goes beyond the physical dimension, the 12-minute video results in an excellent and visually striking film that mixes fantasy with a strong plot and dark high-pitched electronic music.

The music video tells the story of two twins, a man, and a woman. The man is involved in a severe motorcycle accident and is urgently brought to the hospital, hanging onto his life. At the exact same time, and in a different place, the woman is vicariously living her brother’s death. From that moment on, their bodies get spiritually reunited.

The two twins, who have been apart in life, find each other again through their deaths.

This direction is very neat, all the scenes are on point and no element is superfluous. The images are imposing and beautiful.

The acting is truthful and subtle, the actors are almost dancers who are fighting to be kept alive and together.

Despite being extremely dark and poignant, this music video turns out to be very poetic. The director proves to be very capable of keeping a balance between darkness and light, between speed and slowness, and between birth and death.

After watching this artistic and skilled video, the audience will be left wondering: will the twin souls, so strongly connected on earth, get eventually separated?