ANIMA
2023 · 6m · Serbia
Directed by Đorđe Stojiljković
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
In a dystopian Belgrade of 2129, an android on the brink of collapse undertakes a desperate quest to recharge his failing battery, guided by a cryptic phone call to a mysterious woman in the city's slums — only to discover his mission carries a purpose far greater than survival.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A one-man sci-fi dystopia on YouTube that somehow dodges every bloated streaming-era cliché — the premise wants to be spiritual and mysterious, but Stojiljković's willingness to let decaying Belgrade *be* the future (no chrome, no CGI band-aids) is genuinely subversive.
There's a lineage here — Eastern European cinema's long conversation with ruins and metaphysical wandering — that Stojiljković clearly respects, and his restraint with the camera and editing suggests a filmmaker aware he's working in a tradition that values patience over spectacle.
The entire film pivots on Stojiljković's decision to shoot on location in actual deteriorating Belgrade rather than dress it; that single choice — treating a real city's decay as more convincing than any production design — is what makes a six-minute one-person operation feel like cinema rather than a concept.
Reviews
As a teaser to what may come in the future, this isn't terrible (wooden acting aside). As a self-contained coherent short, this is woefully lacking.