Liminal
2019 · 7m
Directed by Collin Davis, Matt Litwiller
Tones: contemplative, tender
Gwen, the lead scientist on a secret human-teleportation experiment, steps out for a smoke break with a co-worker and grapples with the discovery that a test subject has lost something in transit.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a sci-fi premise that refuses the usual beat—no explosion, no twist reveal, just two people talking about what *didn't* happen. Boring to most, which is exactly why it works.
The film understands the lineage of speculative minimalism (Tarkovsky's patient ontology, recent arthouse sci-fi's restraint) and executes with compositional discipline—every frame earns its quiet.
The entire emotional weight hangs on one decision: letting the camera linger on Gwen's face *after* she's absorbed what's been lost, rather than cutting away. That single held moment makes a seven-minute conversation feel like a small tragedy.
Reviews
Liminal succeeds because it suggests the future instead of showing it to us. Like scientific experiments in general, most sci-fi shorts fail to make their mark on the world, but this film is the kind that shows us that you don't need an astronomical budget to create a compelling sci-fi film; sometimes all you need is an intriguing conversation between two talented actors and an idea that seems believable.