VERDICT: Valeria Hofmann’s uncanny and unsettling film explores the collisions between a video game and the real world, when a young woman attempts to call out online harassment.
Valeria Hofmann’s new short film ALiEN0089, which premiered at Sundance earlier this month and screens now in Rotterdam, began with a true story. A school friend of the director recounted her harassment at the hands of online gamers and this scenario forms the basis of a troubling, paranoid thriller that permeates the boundaries between real and virtual worlds. A young woman, Sabina (Mariana Di Girolamo), seeks to draw attention to her harassment by aggressive faceless players of an online war game, little realising that there is an intruder watching her inside her own home.
The distinction between what is game and what is reality – between what is happening online and what is happening ‘away from keyboard’ – is intentionally complicated right from the beginning of ALiEN0089. Films often begin with diegetic sound or voiceover against a black screen, but in this instance, it is a loading screen. What the audience then sees is all from the first-person perspective of somebody breaking into Sabina’s house. The entire experience is modelled on video game aesthetics, mimicking the visual language of the exact game Sabina plays. As the intruder moves around the house and spies on its occupant, they also collect conspicuous objects exactly as a game protagonist would: a beetle in a petri dish, a gleaming golden flick knife.
Recurring fragments of Sabina’s video monologue about her online persecution are heard, while the camera appears to travel in and out of computer screens around the house. At one point the screens show newsreel footage of riots and violent protests in contemporary Chile, elsewhere we see Sabina’s video and footage captured from her gaming experiences. Later, we see our unidentified assailant navigating a destabilised, digitised version of Sabina’s home itself, real-world details rendered as pixelated debris. The film goes deeper and deeper into subsequent virtual worlds (like Christopher Nolan’s Inception, or, perhaps more pertinently, David O’Reilly’s mind-expanding game Everything) to the point that the video game aesthetics seem to sprawl into reality, and so does the threat of violence aimed at Sabina. On one level, ALiEN0089 is a film about the toxic masculinity still prevalent in certain gaming subcultures, on another, it’s an even more chilling reflection on the dangers lurking in the darkest corners – online and off.
Director, screenwriter: Valeria Hofmann
Cast: Mariana Di Girolamo
Producers: Daniela Camino, Augusto Matte, Pascual Mena
Cinematography: Manuel Vlastelica
Editing: Javiera Gutierrez Oteiza
Music: Christopher Manhey
Production design: Camila Zurita, Pascual Mena
Production company: Mimbre Films (Chile)
Venue: International Film Festival Rotterdam (Short & Mid-length)
In Spanish
21 minutes