Visible
2016 · 15m · USA
Directed by Clay Delauney
Genres: drama, romance, sci-fi
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
In 2086, seventy years after the entire human race turned invisible, a conflicted artist named Guy is among a small number of people mysteriously beginning to reappear. He must choose between the vulnerability of being seen — and loved — or staying safely unseen.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a love story dressed up in sci-fi drag, which would be whatever, except Delauney actually uses the invisibility premise to say something genuinely strange about desire—that being seen is the scarier intimacy than disappearing. The twist is structural, not plot, and that's almost enough to forgive the romantic sincerity.
Delauney locates himself in a precise lineage of body-horror and philosophical romance—the DNA of Tarkovsky bleeding into contemporary speculative design—and the film's formal restraint (all negative space and careful framing) respects that inheritance without genuflecting to it.
The real film lives in the decision to shoot presence and absence identically—same blocking, same light, same camera—so that visibility becomes a purely relational fact, something that only exists between two people; that single formal commitment transforms a high-concept premise into something genuinely intimate and alive.
Reviews
Snider's succinct writing keeps the story on track, which allows room for Delauney's direction, assisted by some truly astonishing cinematography from E. Gustavo Peterson.
A gem with a message genuinely so profound for a 15 minute short film.
Festivals
- Northeast Film Festival 2016, Best Actor in a Short (Henry Ian Cusick)