STARBORN
2024 · 8m · USA
Directed by Kylie Eaton
Tones: contemplative, tense
The first woman scheduled to travel to interstellar space discovers she is unexpectedly pregnant and must decide whether to continue her mission or her pregnancy. A near-future sci-fi piece about reproductive choice on the eve of humanity's greatest scientific journey.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects this to be a preachy manifesto, but Eaton actually trusts the premise enough to let it strangle itself—the sci-fi machinery and bodily reality collide without editorializing, which is rarer and meaner than the earnest version would've been.
A formally sophisticated entry in the lineage of speculative drama that uses near-future constraint to excavate present-tense ethics; the editing rhythm between mission control and intimate decision-making spaces shows real compositional control.
The single choice that cracks this open is the sound design of the spacecraft—clinical, almost indifferent to her presence—which transforms what could've been a speech into a structural argument about whose body the future belongs to.
Reviews
...like a work of art: you watch, you reflect, and hopefully you walk away a different person...if ever so slightly.
Raising a kid among the stars could work, though hostile encounters may prove otherwise.
Festivals
- HollyShorts Film Festival 2024