Skipped
2017 · 4m · UAE
Directed by Faisal Hashmi
Tones: contemplative, tense
A man working late at an office stumbles upon a time-travel power and uses it to boost his productivity, only to discover the unintended consequences of manipulating time. Shot in Dubai on professional cinema equipment.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Hashmi squeezes a complete sci-fi premise out of a single location and a minimal crew — the choice to shoot entirely in an empty Dubai office at night means every frame is doing double duty as atmosphere and exposition. That disciplined economy is exactly what short-form sci-fi demands.
Time travel for office productivity. Four and a half minutes. Shot in Dubai on a C200. That's the entire pitch and the entire film, in that order. Coherence and Primer would like a word.
A Primer-on-a-budget gimmick film that treats time travel as office productivity hack — the conceit is cute but the runtime barely lets the dramatic stakes register before they're resolved.