Electric Child
directed by Simon Jaquemet
Switzerland, 2024, 118′, Sci-fi thriller
With the rapid evolution of Artificial Intelligence and the massive investments made by the world’s most forward-looking governments to dominate the frontier of future technological development, it is clear that AI, and the growing overlap between the virtual and the real, has become central to countless narratives. It is precisely around this imaginary that Electric Child, the English-language debut of Swiss director Simon Jaquemet, builds its reflections, largely centered on the relationship between virtuality and reality and on the (dramatic? optimistic?) consequences that the imminent merging of these dimensions may generate for the future of humankind.
Sealing this connection, and framing it within a sci-fi narrative, is the character of Jason (Elliott Crosset Hove), a computer scientist and AI expert working to create a groundbreaking form of Artificial Intelligence capable of inhabiting, in the guise of a “human being,” a digital network entirely mirroring our own world. But Jason’s newborn son is doomed to die from a genetic disease, and in a desperate attempt to save the child’s life, the scientist agrees to fulfill the AI’s specific request: to transfer itself into the real world, under the promise of healing Jason’s firstborn.
Unlike many similar works, however, Electric Child approaches its reflections on the progressive humanization of AI, and on what this phenomenon may mean for the preservation of individual singularity, without slipping into easy millenarian fears or purely apocalyptic visions. As Jaquemet seems to suggest, humanity’s future, for better or worse, still depends on its ability and willingness to shape technological development as a tool for improvement and to place it at the service of humankind.
The Dutchman
directed by Andre Gaines
USA, 2025, 88′, Psychological thriller
Black identity, in an America that tends to conceal its own guilt, both past and perhaps still present, can often appear fractured, especially in the eyes of those already grappling with a profound personal and existential crisis. Clay (played by a riveting André Holland) seems to embody, in The Dutchman, the paradigmatic example of this condition: an African American businessman of great success, yet unable to reconcile the expectations imposed upon him by white society with the explosive pressures of a marriage on the verge of collapse.
His anxiety to find balance within such a chaotic horizon only deepens his psychological disarray day by day, until a fateful nighttime encounter on the subway with an unpredictable, Mephistophelean woman (Kate Mara) forces him to face a choice: to finally take control of his life, or to sink into the abyss of the crisis that is consuming him from within.
From this negative spiral of emotions and existential short-circuits, American filmmaker Andre Gaines crafts a truly unsettling narrative, one that places the viewer in the same state of disequilibrium experienced by the disoriented protagonist, while infusing the tense language of the psychological thriller/horror with resonant political undertones. These, in turn, reflect on the contemporary legacies of Black culture and the struggles African Americans still face whenever they attempt to assert their collective identity within a society still driven, at its core, by whiteness.
The Well
directed by Hubert Davis
Canada, 2025, 91′, Post-apocalyptic drama / Survival thriller
How can a sense of community be created in a world where individuals must rely solely on themselves, or on their closest loved ones, to sustain even the faintest illusion of survival? This is the question at the heart of The Well, the latest work by Canadian filmmaker Hubert Davis. Set in a post-apocalyptic landscape, the film, in line with others of its kind, maps a geography – spatial, existential, and emotional – where absolute individualism seems to be the only viable path for those seeking to endure in a world progressively emptied of humans, nations, borders, and, consequently, community.
At first, the family represents the only nucleus in which one can find a sense of belonging. But when a young man arrives at the home of Sarah and her parents and discovers that their well, the main source of “life” in a post-epidemic world, has been contaminated, the characters’ sense of belonging begins to shift. When Sarah accepts the young man’s invitation to follow him into the woods in search of a new water source, she is soon forced to renegotiate her very notion of “loyalty” upon meeting the members of the community (or cult) to which he belongs.
Against this backdrop of spatial and existential crossings, The Well draws on the codes of post-apocalyptic storytelling to explore the various ways in which human beings inhabit, and redefine, the world.
The Occupant
directed by Hugo Keijzer
Netherlands, 2025, 104′, Sci-fi thriller
Sci-fi works like this The Occupant can break barriers and space-time boundaries without any seams, giving rise to cosmic journeys with a clearly cathartic tone. It is in the light of such a narrative device that the English geologist Abby (Ella Balinska), torn between her work and the pain over her beloved sister’s dire medical condition, is literally catapulted into a surreal expedition by an astral force of indeterminate nature, with the goal of bringing her to a deeper understanding of the sufferings tearing her apart from within. And when she finds herself stranded among the mountains of the Georgian Caucasus, where she had ventured to recover a material so precious it could potentially save her sister, the protagonist is forced to embark on a true survival journey, at the end of which she may return to the light. But the paths of suffering are tortuous, and by constantly expanding the narrative’s timing, Dutch filmmaker Hugo Keijzer lets us experience all of Abby’s anguish, here located in a transcendent space, halfway between the mountain’s frost and the coldness of the cosmos. An “animistic” place, where the supernatural elements (i.e., the science-fictional shades of the story) rise as allegories of the profound, and in this case sorrowful, sisterly love.
The Storm
directed by Busifan
China, 2024, 105′, Animated fantasy epic
Yang Zhigang builds an animated epic in which the art of Chinese ink intertwines with a narrative steeped in symbolism and folkloric echoes. A young orphan is taken in by Daguzi, a man of enigmatic past who finds him adrift in a river. The two embark on a journey toward the Bay of the Great Dragon, driven by the search for a black sailboat that guards an ancient treasure known as Nuralumin Satin. But their path is strewn with monsters, curses, and an inexorable transformation that threatens Daguzi, forcing the young Bao to face dark presences. The film stands out for its unusually refined aesthetic, paying homage to Chinese painting traditions and creating an intensely dreamlike and evocative atmosphere. The plot, though complex and laden with cultural references, tackles universal themes such as identity, sacrifice, and the quest for redemption. With this work, the independent Chinese director places himself within an animation strand that subverts Western conventions, offering an original and profound vision of the world filtered through the eyes of the young hero and his enigmatic mentor.
Strange Harvest
directed by Stuart Ortiz
USA, 2024, 94′, Mockumentary horror
As is typical of the best mockumentaries, Strange Harvest constantly moves along the (ultra-thin) line between reality and fiction, never breaking its own “game”. The repetition of documentary-film languages, here reframed in a purely fictional narrative context, allows American filmmaker Stuart Ortiz not only to engage with the “playful” expectations that viewers have long held of faux documentaries since The Blair Witch Project, but also to grant a deep sense of “verisimilitude” to a story that is in fact artfully constructed. Having abandoned the fantastical-horror drift of many comparable works, the Californian director’s second film focuses (almost) exclusively on the investigative documentary terrain: replicating all the most common forms and structures, from interviews with agents involved in the hunt for a phantom serial killer stationed in San Bernardino (nicknamed “Mr. Shiny”), to the meticulous reconstruction of case evidence, with the aim of tracing the steps of an apparently “impossible” investigation and one difficult to decode. In this way Strange Harvest, centring primarily on police detection practices, fictitiously reconstructs the terms of an absurd inquiry, tuned to the pursuit of a devilishly elusive man who to both the agents (and the audience) appears “abstract”, as if he were a ghost.
Salt Along the Tongue
directed by Parish Malfitano
Australia, 2024, 113′, Horror-drama
Sometimes, to find one’s place within a culturally unfamiliar dimension, it is enough to return for a moment to one’s roots. For every Italian migrant who left their homeland in search of more virtuous living conditions, food often represented a safe harbour, a universe in which to take refuge and rediscover oneself even in places physically far from one’s land of origin. The family of the young Italian-Australian Mattia (Laneikka Denne) offers a striking example of this phenomenon, so much so that its members saw in cuisine a tool through which to assert themselves in an apparently “alien” nation such as Australia, while nevertheless maintaining that sense of identity that seems to link them to a single fil rouge. From this perspective, all the characters in Salt Along the Tongue are in one way or another connected to the culinary culture of the Bel Paese, so much so that in the film every narrative node, especially those relating to the protagonist’s processing of maternal grief, passes through food. And since the key-theme of the story ideally marries the languages of horror, the Italian-Australian director Parish Malfitano (also of Italian descent) chooses to draw upon the aesthetics of the giallo, with particular reference to the works of Mario Bava, to delineate the logic of a profoundly cathartic narrative, where the codes of body-horror or of the ghost-story, mixed with the visual coordinates of domestic b-movies, allow the filmmaker to grant food a connotation as supernatural as it is cultural, around which a disintegrating family unit will rediscover its identity.
A Grand Mockery
directed by Adam C. Briggs, Sam Dixon
Australia, 2024, 104′, Psychological drama
The Australian New Wave reconfigured, during the ’70s, the way of telling the country and the idiosyncrasies of its island-dwelling inhabitants. From this point of view, the two talented filmmakers Adam C. Briggs and Sam Dixon have in recent times shown that they have absorbed with precision the lessons of the great masters of the past, from Ted Kotcheff to Nicholas Roeg, so much so that they use the big screen as a resonance chamber for the eccentricities of their fellow countrymen, encountering environments that are sometimes deviant and inconceivably elusive. And precisely the protagonist of A Grand Mockery (played by Dixon himself) seems to represent the emblematic object of the transformative power that Australian spaces exert on those who traverse them. Josie is, not by chance, a man without real direction: throughout the film we see him wandering among the dirtiest and most forgotten corners of Brisbane, and during this uncontrollable motor drift he undergoes a progressive involution/deformation, both physical and mental, triggered by the alienation with which the city’s underworld permeates the individual. And in light of these almost cosmic life-trajectories, the duo of directors stage with A Grand Mockery a tale dominated by stasis, where nothing really happens, and whose meaning lies entirely in the individual actions, gestures, movements and in the pure worldly aspirations of the eccentric protagonist, under which he (and by extension the average Australian citizen) seems grotesquely to sink.
Salvageland
directed by Lino Cayetano
World Premiere at Oltre lo Specchio Film Festival
The Philippine Premiere will take place on November 26.
Philippines, 2025, 90′, Thriller/Drama
Logline
A retiring local cop and his principled rookie son are thrust into a night of savage violence when a wounded woman—fleeing a powerful crime syndicate—seeks refuge in their rundown police sub-station in a desolate town along a dead highway, forcing father and son into a brutal stand that will test their bond, their beliefs, and their will to survive.
Short Synopsis
In a forgotten town along a dead stretch of highway buried beneath layers of volcanic mud, substation chief SARGE MORALES is just days from retirement—having long accepted that survival means keeping your head down. But this hardened outlook puts him at odds with his son, JULES, a young and principled cop determined to investigate a string of dismembered bodies tied to a violent car syndicate led by DONALD NAVARRO and his ruthless siblings, CALOY and MIA.
The growing rift between father and son comes to a head one fateful night when they encounter SALLY—Donald’s wife—desperate for refuge at the isolated substation. When Jules defies orders and offers her protection, Sarge is forced to choose between preserving the fragile status quo or standing by his son. In confronting the cost of his silence, he must decide: risk everything to protect Jules—or stay complicit and lose him forever.
“Salvageland” is a gritty neo-Western thriller about moral reckoning and the price of justice in a land scorched by violence and neglect—where men are shaped by silence, fear, and the unforgiving environment they’ve learned to survive.
Film Information & Cast and Crew
Title: Salvageland
Director: Lino S. Cayetano
Screenplay: Shugo Praico, John Carlo Pacala
Producers: Shugo Praico, Charm Guzman, Arleen Cuevas, Vincent Del Rosario III, Veronique Del Rosario-Corpus, Valerie Salvador Del Rosario
Executive Producers: Vic Del Rosario, Lino S. Cayetano, Amparo Maria J. Zamora, Lyle Pasco, Manuel Zamora Jr.
Country of Production: Philippines
Language: Filipino with English subtitles
Type of film: Narrative Feature
Genre: Crime-Drama, Neo-Western
Running time: 1hr and 30mins
Format: Digital
—
Cast: Richard Gomez, Elijah Canlas, Mon Confiado
DOP: Moises M.M. Zee
Production Designer: Carmela Danao
Editor and Colorist: Moises M.M. Zee
Scorer: Jose Antonio Buencamino
Sound Design: Gregorio Rodriguez III
Junior Producers: Aiah Gertos, Maryruth Maximo
Assistant Director: Ricardo Navarro
The Journey to No End
directed by Chen Xiang (Special guest in attendance – November 11, 8:30 PM, RUFA Aula Magna)
China, 2025, 93′, Dystopian sci-fi drama
In a future devastated by environmental collapse, humanity hangs between two worlds: the real one, now in ruins, and the New World, a digital dimension where it is possible to upload one’s consciousness and choose travel companions for a new artificial existence. Balanced between these two worlds lives Cheng Qi, a sixteen-year-old who, after the disappearance of his father into the virtual realm, embarks on a journey to find his mother who left him years before. His search soon becomes an inner journey, a path of formation and disorientation, where the line that separates memory and simulation, desire and truth, grows increasingly fragile. In a dystopian universe of silences, pauses and suspended atmospheres, director Chen Xiang builds a story that reflects on the fragility of identity and the human need for belonging. As the boundary between reality and artifice dissolves, Cheng Qi must choose whether to face the loneliness of the real world or surrender to the illusory perfection of the New World. In this endless suspension, the journey becomes a metaphor for the human condition: the search for the self as the only possible form of salvation.
Can I Get a Witness?
directed by Ann Marie Flaming
Canada, 2024, 110′, Allegorical sci-fi drama
Utopia often hides the seeds of dystopia. The vision of an “other-world”, cleansed of the anomalies that characterize the reality we live in – and which help cast a dark halo over the planet’s future and humankind’s ability to preserve the global ecosystem for coming generations – can easily degrade into an equally apocalyptic presentation of the everyday. It is precisely to this phenomenon that Canadian director Ann Marie Fleming seems to allude in Can I Get a Witness?, a kind of eco-fable in which anthropocentrism – that is, humanity’s inclination to influence planetary transformations with its daily actions – is entirely de-energized. Every individual placed in this alternate future indeed has the potential to live up to 50 years of age: an age at which they must accept the “end-of-life procedures” proposed by local governments so as not to inflict further harm on the planet. Young Kiah (Keira Jang) knows this, yet only during her first day of work as a “witness” (the girl’s task is to depict, with her drawings, the final moments of fifty-year-olds) does she understand the enormous sacrifices we individuals would have to make metaphorically in order to guarantee a chance of salvation for the world around us. And in outlining such an allegorical narrative, the filmmaker adopts not the pure sci-fi languages, but those of an intimate drama. The only ones, in her view, that allow an apparently “apocalyptic” story to validate the capacity of people to hand down to posterity a planet on which it is worth living.