The works compiled for the thematic program PANIC carry echoes of social collapse, ecological decline, and existential dread. Featuring a mix of synthetic, AI-generated visions of catastrophe combined with more poetic and introspective CGI works, game engine aesthetics, and collage-like animations, this diverse program instinctively induces a sense of PANIC. Corpus and the Wandering sets the tone with a fragmented atmosphere and an initial sense of existential unease. Auntlantis imagines a world overwhelmed by plastic waste, where environmental caretakers—the “aunties”—navigate hybrid oceans, encountering sea creatures and jelly malls in a world transformed by pollution and consumerism. Pacific Vein takes us through a painterly panorama of the US West where Julian Assange stands between imperial, fake-Roman buildings as a soda maker. Media and fictional scenes merge with documentary footage in a collage-like animation. Light up New York For But a Moment imagines how Times Square is overtaken by a mutating media-monster. Buildings dissolve into screens and architecture surrenders to spectacle and advertising. Greetings From the New World hovers distantly over derelict city structures and landscapes of excess, while CORE DUMP surveys a monumental e-waste dump in the desert from a drone’s perspective. Shockwave guides us on an infinite zoom-out through barren AI-generated landscapes in the cataclysmic aftermath of the atomic era. Whether swarming over mountains of plastic, obsolete tech, and industrial detritus, these works confront us with the perspective of looming environmental collapse and societal decay. Hush Now conveys a similar sense of quiet dread. Using hyperreal deepfakes, the film shows global leaders in eerily intimate moments—lying still, eyes closed, seemingly asleep or in mourning. Their expressions are unreadable, frozen in synthetic silence, as the world burns offscreen. Kinderfilm concludes the program with an even more haunting premise. It’s an ordinary day in the game Grand Theft Auto V: The streets are busy; people follow their routines, barbecue, sunbathe. Yet the game world is marked by a grave and troubling absence: a missing future suspended out of safety concerns. A new sense of dread and panic creeps in, this time not in anticipation of a nightmarish future yet to come, but through the chilling absence of any future at all.
Corpus and the Wandering, Jo Roy (CA)
Auntlantis, Niceaunties (SG)
Pacific Vein, Ulu Braun (DE)
Light Up New York For But A Moment, Zhuyuan Liu (CN)
Greetings From the New World, Matthieu Mantovani (FR)
CORE DUMP, Alona Rodeh (IL/RO)
Shockwave, Mihai Grecu (RO)
Hush Now, Laen Sanches (FR)
Kinderfilm, Total Refusal (AT)
