Synopsis

A Chinese, a Ukrainian and a Swiss walk into a small town in East Germany. They are doing location scouting for the construction of a post-apocalypse shelter. However, they are soon to find out that the apocalypse is different from what they have been informed.

Curator’s Note

The short film combines the form of a documentary and a feature film. The director participated in the short film and tried to explore a modern version of Waiting for Godot.The short film abstracts the end of the world and the use of nuclear weapons.Where nihilism prevails, build shelters that will never be built.The shelter that can never be built has become modern people's response and doubts about existentialism.The short film embodies Munsterberg's film theory that film reproduces the reality of human dreams.The countdown at the end of the short film strips away human perception of space, time, cause and effect in the real environment.Thus creating a possible spiritual space. The style is unique as the film presents a serious topic that is the end of the world, but it deals with the disaster in a cheerful and lively way with fun. The final countdown is over, and the moment when nothing happens seems a bit disappointing, but also endlessly memorable. (Jiaxin Zhao &Yifan Wei)

Director’s bio

We are FYK, formed by three friends in Berlin: Florian Rudolph (Switzerland), Yueqi Wu (China) and Kyrylo Alferiev (Ukraine).

Flo is studying directing in Film University Babelsberg, Germany. He has a soft heart for spiders and thinks he was a medieval nanny in his previous life.

Kyrylo is a student from Kyiv National University of Theatre, Film and Television, Ukraine. He loves Gaspar Noé’s movie and makes really great Varenyky.

Yueqi doesn’t get to study films but she is doing a PhD on Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon, UK. After four years of study in Berlin, she is now very good at pretending she understands German.

Our friendship starts from and survives through a filmmaking workshop organised by Film University Babelsberg in summer 2023. Coming together based on names drawn from a hat, we surprisingly found ourselves sharing similarly bizarre humor. They say directors are isolated beasts but we seem to be fine. We had great laugh and thousands of mosquito bites together in the 5-day summer camp. We wish you as much fun watching this film as we had making it.

Director’s Note

The short film was shot in two days with very limited resources in a small German town we visited for the first time. We are exploring a way to blur the line between fiction and documentary.

All the interviewees in the film are real residents from that town. Their interviews are the first and only time we met them. With the given theme "Confidence", we decided to make a film about apocalypse.

We are a generation of young people who are so obsessed with the apocalypse narrative like no one before. We have taken our confusion, distrust and powerlessness about this world, and shoved them all into a catharsis about apocalypse.

Festival & Awards

Casts

Yueqi Wu

Credits

Directors: Florian Rudolph, Kyrylo Alferiev, Yueqi Wu

Writer: Yueqi Wu

Producer: Monika Richter