Chimera
2022 · 25m · USA
Directed by Andrew Lee Ryan
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
In a not-too-distant future small town, a VR life-simulation junkie ventures back into reality on an urgent mission to score a new dopamine game cartridge before happiness withdrawal sets in. As she chases the next hit, the film asks whether engineered contentment can substitute for a real life.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Finally—a sci-fi that doesn't waste time moralizing about tech; instead it just lets dopamine become currency and watches a woman's desperation do all the talking. Everyone else would've made this a cautionary tale; Ryan just makes it *true*.
The film sits in productive tension with a lineage of body-horror and addiction cinema, but never quite commits to the formal rigor that would elevate its premise beyond a smart-enough thought experiment into something formally necessary.
That moment when she crosses back into reality and the sound design drops—goes from the processed hum of the rig to actual environmental texture—is the whole film in miniature, a single sonic choice that makes the stakes suddenly, physically real.
Festivals
- Rhode Island International Film Festival 2022, Best Sci-Fi Short
- Rhode Island International Film Festival 2022, Best Performance
- Hollywood Shorts Film Festival 2022
- Bushwick Film Festival 2022
- Philip K. Dick Science Fiction & Supernatural Festival 2022
- Los Angeles Lift-Off Festival 2022