LOOP | Sci-Fi Short Film | DUST
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🪐 You are entering a fictional zone: reality has been suspended.
In a near-future world where technology has rendered most human labor obsolete, Zoe Pearce, a despairing artist, finds herself selected as a finalist for the universe challenge. This exclusive competition promises membership in humanity’s most coveted experience: complete digital personalized immersion, where pain, suffering, and unwanted emotions are eliminated.
“LOOP” by Brenton Gieser
📶 Connect with the Filmmakers:
https://instagram.com/brentongieser/
https://www.instagram.com/ourfutureisloop/
https://letterboxd.com/film/loop-2026/
🎥 More About “Loop”:
In a near-future world where technology has rendered most human labor obsolete, Zoe Pearce, a despairing artist, is selected as a finalist for the UNIverse Challenge: humanity’s most coveted prize, and a chance at complete digital immersion where pain and unwanted emotion are engineered away and replaced by perfect peace.
Inside Unimate’s selection process, Zoe and her fellow finalists are asked to prove they deserve to be relieved of their suffering. But Zoe carries something into that room that the company has not accounted for, and the closer she gets to winning, the clearer it becomes that she is not there for the prize.
LOOP asks whether true peace comes from escaping our pain or learning to move through it.
🎬 Director’s Statement:
LOOP was born from a deep feeling of unease as the ground we walk on constantly shifts beneath us. With radical transformations in technology, AI, politics, and culture more broadly, our today feels as uncertain as our future. We are moving into an era of dislocation, where surviving for some may mean dissociating from the world that exists around us.
Growing up in the Bay Area and having spent my twenties working in tech, I’ve witnessed firsthand how innovation becomes weaponized by capitalism not just for profit, but for something more insidious. LOOP imagines a world where the promise of a painless life is offered, but with the capitalistic intent of emotional extraction to keep the engine and model of a company running and scaling. Our minds, our suffering, our very humanity becomes the resource to be mined.
The ethos of “progress at all costs” has evolved into something more dangerous: the commodification of human experience itself. In a world where AI can simulate comfort and erase pain, I fear we risk losing what makes us distinctly human our ability to move through suffering, to process it, to let it transform us.
The spirit of LOOP is anchored by the belief that the only way through is through the processing of our own suffering, our own messy humanity. That this part of our essence might be our most valuable attribute as we move into the next few decades. I hope LOOP can serve as a cautionary tale about what we stand to lose when we outsource our pain. We have a choice about how we want to live in the future but that choice needs to be made, now.
🎞️ About the Film:
Brenton Gieser – Writer and Director
Sam Kelly Jr. – Producer
Alexa Rocero – Producer
Brenton Gieser – Producer
Joshua Pausanos – Director of Photography
Olivia Kanz – Production Designer
Ryan Thurston – Costume Designer
Ollie Knocker – Editor
Ondrej Rakusan – Lead VFX Artist
Blake Henderson – Sound Design & Mix
Taylor Joshua Rankin – Composer
Logan Murray – Production Manager
Rahbar Khan – Production Coordinator
Arthur Adams – Locations Manager
Cast –
Syra McCarthy
Mitya Savelau
Nika Burnett
Juliette Cecile
Rachel Alejandro
Shruti Tewari
Jessica Wei
Spencer Tsang
Pat Rocero
Ryan Thurston
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About DUST:
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