Private Project

How To Be Human

An otherworldly being is sculpted into human form by the realisation that the nebulous search for truth is what shapes humanity.

  • Natalie Lauren
    Director
    STI: Sexually Transmitted Introductions, Fractured Frame, Eggshells, Bubbles, Grief part 001, 12
  • Gianluca Truda
    Director
    STI: Sexually Transmitted Introductions, Fractured Frame, Eggshells
  • Natalie Lauren
    Writer
  • Gianluca Truda
    Editor
  • AI Generated
    Pictures
  • AI Generated
    Sounds
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Genres:
    Surreal
  • Runtime:
    2 minutes 30 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    October 10, 2025
  • Production Budget:
    0 GBP
  • Country of Origin:
    United Kingdom
  • Shooting Format:
    N/A
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • RecDek @ The BFI
    London
    United Kingdom
    October 10, 2025
    Premiere
    Winner of The Big Screen Hack: 18 hour Filmmaking Hackathon
Director Biography - Natalie Lauren, Gianluca Truda

Natalie Lauren is an award-winning actor, filmmaker and mentor from Norfolk. In 2024, she was selected as one of BFI Network's "Future Producers". She has never worked with AI tools before.

Gianluca Truda is an ML Research Engineer who has been a hobby filmmaker and VFX enthusiast since he commandeered the family camcorder at age 7.

Partners in life and in filmmaking, they previously worked together on surrealist short "Fractured Frame" which launched on festivals August '25.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

This is an experiment in a new medium. The film was conceived, created, and delivered in less than 24 hours. Made entirely without a camera, it was then selected as the winning film to be screened to a full house at BFI Stephen Street, during London Film Festival, mere hours after it was completed.

We entered an "AI Filmmaking Hackathon" on Thursday evening, where we were given access to the cutting-edge generative models for 18 hours, and the challenge of creating a micro short by 3pm the next day. The theme to explore: "What is Truth?"

As live-action filmmakers, our goal was to get hands on with this technology: to get a feel for what it can do, and what the impact might be for our industry. We wanted to approach it like filmmakers, not developers, programmers, or companies wanting to demo their flashy tech. We wanted it to be a film: something with meaning, message, heart, humanity, character, continuity, symbolism, metaphor.

What we realised along the way was just how much human filmmaking is still needed, despite what the marketing of big tech companies would have you believe! Our "bloopers" speak for themselves: "the AI" certainly did not make this film for us.

We also wanted to use the medium to make something that could never, and would never, otherwise be made due to the physical and financial restrictions. With backgrounds in Philosophy and an interest in avant-garde, experimental, techniques, we also wanted to see if we could explore something fundamental about humanity, through this new perspective.

How To Be Human explores the nature of "truth" as a subjective entity we all treat as absolute, and which fundamentally shapes us all. Shown through the perspective of another life form, it asks us to consider the nature society we have built around us, and those we walk among.