Hypertrain
2016 · 4m · Switzerland
Directed by Etienne Kompis, Fela Bellotto
Genres: animation, experimental, sci-fi
Tones: contemplative, surreal, tense
On a train hurtling through warping spatial and temporal dimensions, a lone traveller suddenly comes face to face with himself. A graduation film from Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts that bends perspective and geometry into an unsettling loop.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A graduation film that actually *earns* its M.C. Escher cosplay—the recursive mirror-meet is genuinely unsettling rather than just a cute puzzle box, and the refusal to resolve it cleanly is exactly the kind of subversive patience most shorts are too nervous to attempt.
Kompis and Bellotto demonstrate precise control over an inherited language—the impossible perspective lineage traced through Escher and experimental animation—yet deploy it with formal rigor that feels earned rather than borrowed; the geometry becomes the argument itself.
The decision to lock the perspective shifts to the rhythm of the train's motion rather than the narrative beats creates an almost physical vertigo; that single structural choice transforms what could be a gimmick into something genuinely disorienting on a formal level.
Reviews
A stark but meticulously designed 3-minute animation that uses twisted perspectives and an out-of-this-world narrative to create a brief, but unforgettable short.