Red Gaia
2022 · 13m · South Africa
Directed by Udesh Chetty
Genres: animation, experimental, sci-fi
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, mythic
On a dying red Mars strewn with the ruins of human civilization, the last surviving android desperately guards the final remnants of organic life, grappling with questions of purpose and consciousness while blurring the line between artificial and organic existence. Drawing philosophical inspiration from the Bhagavad Gita, Dante's Purgatorio, and the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the film is a tone-poem meditation on life, death, rebirth, and the cycles of existence.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
One guy, one desktop computer, three ancient religious texts, and a dying Mars — this is the kind of deranged ambition that makes me annoyed everyone else even bothered showing up.
Udesh Chetty solo-built a Mars-AI tone poem on a home desktop, weaving Bhagavad Gita, Tibetan Book of the Dead, and Kabbalah into hard sci-fi — the metaphysical ambition is real, and one-man passion projects of this density are rare.
A one-person desktop passion project weaving the Bhagavad Gita, Tibetan Book of the Dead, and Kabbalah into hard sci-fi AI — that's the kind of solo metaphysical ambition that usually overreaches. Curious if the 13 minutes land or collapse under its own scope.
Festivals
- Berlin Short Film Festival 2022
- Sydney Science Fiction Film Festival 2022
- Calcutta International Cult Film Festival 2022
- Portland Film Festival 2022