Uncanny Valley
2015 · 9m · Argentina
Directed by Federico Heller
Genres: drama, experimental, sci-fi
Tones: contemplative, dark, surreal
In a dystopian future, the least resourced people are addicted to connecting to online video games through a sophisticated virtual-reality system implanted in the nose, narrated in a documentary tone.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A dystopia narrated like a nature documentary about human addiction—the tonal inversion alone is delicious, and Heller commits to the weirdness without winking. Most sci-fi shorts genuflect to spectacle; this one finds horror in restraint and anthropological distance.
Heller positions this squarely in the lineage of body-horror and speculative documentary (Cronenberg, Wakamatsu), with formal rigor in its deadpan narration and precise framing that refuses cheap emotional manipulation. The craft lies in what it withholds.
The decision to embed the VR technology in the *nose* rather than the eyes or brain—a single anatomical choice that's both mundane and grotesque—transforms the whole film from generic cyberpunk into something genuinely unsettling and tactile. That specificity is everything.