Happy New Year, Jim
2022 · 7m · Italy
Directed by Andrea Gatopoulos
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tense
On New Year's Eve, Jim and Morten play video games through the night as they always do — but Morten is quietly, increasingly uncomfortable, and the familiar ritual of online companionship starts to feel like something else entirely.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A film about video-game loneliness directed by an ex-pro gamer who quit at 18 to make cinema — the AI-generated stranger-faces inserted mid-match are the kind of formal move that makes this more than just 'sad gamers' territory.
Directors' Fortnight short by a former esports pro, using AI-generated faces inside the match as an uncanny intrusion into online loneliness — the form is the diagnosis.
Andrea Gatopoulos (former pro esports player) using AI-generated faces of strangers mid-match to intrude into the loneliness of late-night online gaming. Directors' Fortnight Cannes selection — the specificity of the gaming-isolation premise is rare.
Festivals
- Cannes Film Festival — Quinzaine des Cinéastes (Directors' Fortnight) 2022
- Encounters Film Festival 2022