The story of Bradley Manning, not as a Wikileaks ‘hacktivist’, but as a young American soldier simultaneously going through a crisis-of-conscious and a crisis-of-identity.
Animated in a rotoscoped pixel-art style and using dialogue from Bradley’s online conversations, the film explores issues of personal and political secrets, digital identity and alienation.
An abstract comedy for devices such as iPhones or iPads, using emoji (Japanese text message character pictures) as material with which to draw. The script is is an attempt to connect the symbols, and to celebrate the unpredictable, hilarious, moving and complicated nature of communication and understanding.
Three narratives unfold together. Inside a vast nature reserve sits a solitary building, a café, where an important meeting is being held by executives. Outside in the park, the collective singular lounge about wearing fancy garments. Images are exchanged, participation simulated: the interminable present. Meanwhile, the dormant wildlife fades away.
A boy confesses why he commits suicide at his school. Troubled by hallucinations of demons around him, he decides to stand up to the demons and exposes them. Only he has to bear with the consequences that come along.
Seven year old Ernesto feels left out when he realises he's the only kid in school with a full set of milk teeth. When his efforts to fit in fail miserably, Ernesto resorts to drastic measures to get rid of them but his teeth have other plans.
A transformation occurs through which, using elements of clothing, pattern and architecture, a woman hides and reveals herself. A narrative interplay unfolds between her body and these elements, until she chooses to abandon her identity by absorption into the fabric of her surroundings.
