contactmaxi

short film · 2026

What is reality?

Role Direction, design & soundTools Nano Banana Pro, GPT Image 2, Seedance 2.0, Premiere ProBrief Milano Film Festival
The Vigil card: a collage of the film's surreal imagery over the line Time to wake up.

The Vigil

The premise

The world has forgotten how to sleep.

A young scientist moves through the warped routines of a city that no longer rests, a waking life laced with hallucination, building a cure he doesn't realize he needs. The whole film is generated: no footage, no locations, no actors, the protagonist built from scratch and held consistent across every shot.

Two days

Day one is hallucination: locked camera, warm and dreamlike, a calm too composed to be real.Day two is apocalyptic: handheld, drained to grey and blue-green, the unease of a world that has stopped pretending.

Day two: the same room in ruins, drained to cold blue.
Day one: the assistant on the phone as the scientist arrives, warm and calm.
Day 1Day 2
Day two: the same desk, the office decayed and drained to cold blue.
Day one: the scientist at his desk in a clean, warm-lit office.
Day 1Day 2

Drag to compare the same frame across both days.

Day one: the scientist beside a transit elephant on an empty street at dawn.
Day 1
Day two: the scientist walking into a ruined Helsinki among sleepwalkers.
Day 2
Day one: the scientist holding a lit candle to his mouth in warm light.
Day 1
Day two: a cold close-up of the scientist lowering the headset onto his head.
Day 2

Poster & teaser

The Vigil poster.
Poster
15-second teaser