The end of the world seems like a nightmare to Ben. A memory of a past life that doesn’t belong to him.
We called it the most anticipated short of the year when we featured the trailers over a year ago, and Post Panic have finally given our anticipation reason to thrive! ‘Sundays’ has sent a 15-minute shivering shimmer down our spine to completely re-define our notion of mind-blowing.
Set in Mexico City sometime in the future and starring Brian Petsos (‘Revenge For Jolly’) and Mexican actress Sofia Sisniega. ‘Sundays’ is an ambitious philosophical science-fiction proof-of-concept short that represents not only a first step in realising the feature film ambitions for this future-facing script but also sets PostPanic Pictures firmly on the map as a new brand of filmmakers to watch.
What if the things you know are just a made up story,
an illusion, a lullaby, a bedtime fairytale…
Directed by the visionary filmmaker Mischa Rozema, ‘Sundays’ follows Ben and how the end of the world seems like a nightmare to him. A memory of a past life that doesn’t belong to him. When Ben starts to remember Isabelle, the only love he’s ever known, he realises she’s missing in his life. An existential descent into confusion and the desperate need to find out the truth begins. This reality depicts a stunning, surprising and dark world. A world that is clearly not his.
People have asked us, why the decision to have the live action element in Mexico City funded through Kickstarter? why not funded through more traditional sources? First of all, if you have success with crowdfunding via something like Kickstarter it’s pretty instant and you can have your budget raised within a month. Also, from a practical point of view, there are no strings attached and your production will stay independent which was very important for us. What you give in return to the people who contribute is involvement – they are made an important part of the process with regular updates, and goodies like, t-shirts, prints, behind the scenes and first viewing etc. What made it even more worthwhile for us was the experience and the fact that we gathered and connected to our future audience, who championed us patiently along the way.
The film completely sweeps us away with its incredible visual effects right from its opening credits, which conveniently and brilliantly sets up the background narrative to an already illustrative and staggering premise. A premise in which might be familiar in base, but manages to pull itself apart in its own and unique dystopian dreamlike environment.
Having the post production process in-house makes a huge difference and is fundamental to the way we set PostPanic up initially. All our directors come from a design/post production background, which makes them very aware of the possibilities and so they think on their feet during the creation of a project. In addition, because they always work closely with and are part of the post-production team, stuff not only gets done more efficiently but creative and technological boundries are pushed further and further by the flexibility this setup offers.
The VFX do take centre stage in ‘Sundays’, but almost as much can be said for the incredible attention given to the sound design which truly manages to captivate you from beginning to end. The soundtrack also mercifully entwines with the audio and visual effects to become one giant scary dream, that we somehow just don’t want to end. The doors are wide open for the feature film, and this short will certainly gather attention to help push the rest of the project forward.
