(DIS)CONNECTED
2023 · 6m · USA
Directed by Karl Stelter
Tones: contemplative, dark, melancholic
Set in 2071, a grieving mother named Mina uses a neural implant to suppress memories of her daughter's death, but when the technology malfunctions she must seek an underground hacker to remove it — forcing her to confront what she has been erasing.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Tech that lets you curate your own grief is the logical endpoint of the Instagram algorithm, and this film was apparently conceived during the director's own pregnancy loss — which makes everything about it land harder.
Karl Stelter grounds speculative memory-suppression tech in his own miscarriage experience — the autobiographical horror gives a familiar Black Mirror premise an unfamiliar moral weight, even if it remains pitch-document architecture.
Six-minute proof-of-concept where the memory-suppression sci-fi is grounded in the director's own miscarriage — the autobiographical horror is what makes the speculative tech feel earned. Brief enough to not overreach.
Festivals
- Austin Film Festival 2023
- LA Shorts International Film Festival 2023
- Toronto International Shorts Festival 2023, Best Sci-Fi