Still Here
2023 · 6m · Netherlands
Directed by Guido Ekker
Genres: animation, drama, sci-fi
Tones: contemplative, dark, melancholic
In a post-apocalyptic future where breathable air is a luxury controlled by the wealthy elite, a state enforcer is tasked with hunting down an underground resistance secretly growing oxygen-producing plants. A fully CG animated short imagining the collision of the climate crisis and the wealth gap.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise hits hard—oxygen as a class weapon—but Ekker plays it straight when the subversive move would've been to complicate the resistance mythology or make the enforcer's complicity seductive. Solid worldbuilding, safe politics.
Real-time Blender rendering used as formal constraint rather than showpiece; the choice to hold on static compositions and let the world's texture do the narrative work recalls a lineage of patient sci-fi cinema more interested in atmosphere than spectacle.
What makes this work is the decision to render the entire dystopia in real-time rather than pre-bake it—it gives the 6 minutes a brittle, almost surveillance-camera quality that serves the claustrophobia of the premise in a way a more polished pipeline never could.
Reviews
A chilling image of the climate crisis and wealth gap — grim animation that makes the viewer gasp for air, ending with an unequivocal message.
The dark and ugly worldbuilding is good.
Festivals
- Nederlands Film Festival 2023
- Kaboom Animation Festival 2023
- Holland Short Film Festival 2023
- Miami International Sci-Fi Film Festival 2023
- Lift-Off Filmmaker Sessions 2023