Half-Dream
2024 · 11m · USA
Directed by Jan Grabowski
Genres: experimental, sci-fi
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
A girl living in a hybrid physical-digital world begins hearing her new neighbor through the wall, and what begins as monochrome isolation escalates into a surreal out-of-body encounter. A sensory exploration of connection and dissolution across digital and physical space.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Half-physical, half-digital world, neighbor heard through the wall — and the film refuses to explain any of it. Surrealism that trusts the audience to live in it rather than understand it.
Jan Grabowski's monochrome-isolation-becoming-sci-fi-out-of-body is a Tarr-meets-Glazer ambition for shorts scale — the escalation is the formal move, and it's a serious one.
The half-physical/half-digital world isn't explained or world-built — it simply is, and the film trusts the atmospheric experience over exposition. Monochrome dissolution into phone-photo-stream is a strong opening image.