After Link (12mins)

After Link is a retro digital horror that blends surrealism and techno-nostalgia with a warm coming-of-age, in an Era of digital disconnection. A cybernetic ritual dressed as youth horror.

We wanted to craft a genre-bending seánce that feels like a post-internet myth of ghosts in the code, made for our 90s generation; a portrait of our desire for connection. A film for our generation, who were raised by broken servers and forgotten forums.

The film screened at the 50th Boston SciFi in the USA and MOTELX in Portugal, leaving our audience craving for more of this unsettling techno-theosophical tale that mixes blood, code, and spiritual yearning and the possibility to bend reality and that our minds were connected to everything else; and that our dreams and the web are as real as the physical world we live in.

Watching our filmmaker's Q&A in Boston was like travelling with the audience on a philosophical quest. A spiral of ideas around the film's main question: What if our soul got archived before our body died? What if it's already happening while we're still alive?
We are submitting to Festivals all around the world to repeat this experience, expand and find our audience, as well as connecting with other filmmakers for future collaborations in the industry.

The idea behind making a film about parallel dimensions is to open to different interpretations and open the dialogue to mental health, social isolation, and spiritual and metaphysical experiences. While someone might call it a hybrid genre mixing SciFi and Spirituality, or Quantum Drama and Horror, the main goal is to dive into the possibility of facing death with positivity, as an unlimited journey into other worlds. This film also tackles mental health.

*For submission disclosure:*
Premiere Status: - UK and Canada country Premiere available!
as well as Sweden, Finland, France, Italy, Germany.
Shooting Location: Portugal
Post-Production: United Kingdom

Our crew is 50% female and LGBTQ and includes members with autism. It is also a first-time director's short film and low-budget.
"After Link's crew is vast and currently based in 7 different European countries and nationalities; the writer/director and post-production team are based in the UK, while the Cast, DoP and production are based in Portugal, Propsmaster and Sound in Spain, and other members are from Belgium, Hungary, Sweden and Brazil. We all gathered in Portugal to make a film with our own resources, with no financial support from grants or a third party.

AFTER LINK was set dressed by Rebecca Pilkington, well known for working on the Oscar-winning film The Danish Girl and the Eternals, and by our PropsMaster Ilka Selmeckzy known for collaborating on Oscar-winning Poor Things, and Dune. It was written/directed by first-time Portuguese director Catarina De Cèzanne, starring Portuguese actress Sofia Vilar and Ukrainian actor Nazariy Koval, and Swiss Cinematographer Frank Kallenberg. This film was only possible thanks to a diverse film crew of men, women, non-binary and also neurodiverse professionals. We are also strong supporters of the LGBTQ community, and extremely committed to give opportunities to filmmakers from isolated and economically disadvantaged regions, like ourselves. We were blessed with an international crew of both professional and emerging talents from Spain, Portugal, Ukraine, Brazil, Hungary, The Netherlands, Belgium and the UK. The story of After Link is inspired on a real event when my childhood friend mysteriously disappeared in the mountains 9 years ago. This film symbolises a dream we always had and was made to honour him, with the hope that one day he might watch it and come back.