A lonely alien goes to extreme lengths to reunite with a lost friend.

Director’s Vision

I work as a full time animator but created this short film in my spare time on evenings and weekends for the past 4 years. The idea for the film came from a question I had when I was younger and first learning about the principles of light travel – “If you could travel faster than light, could you look back at where you came from and see yourself?” An isolated alien exploiting this concept for a brief escape from his loneliness felt like such a great place to set a story. This premise percolated in my head for a few years until I was finally ready to begin work on the film in late 2016. It was in pre-production when I had the thought to develop the idea further and have the main character exploit this principle not to look back at himself, but instead someone he lost. This opened up a whole new meaning for the film and introduced themes of dealing with loss, and the isolation we feel when losing someone close to us. The main character is unable to come to terms with his loss and goes to extreme lengths to avoid accepting reality. He puts on a smile and pretends everything is fine, but we see this for the shallow gesture it is, and that until he learns to move on he will be stuck in this endless loop, his life dominated and defined by the loss he suffered.