Experiencing Interruptions?

The World Before Us

The world existed before us.

Across cities and landscapes, people move as if passing through time rather than living within it. Some appear out of place—figures from another era, or from a time yet to come. No one questions their presence.

Animals, strangers, and fleeting gestures coexist without hierarchy. The ordinary and the unfamiliar dissolve into the same continuum.

Rather than telling a story, the film unfolds as a field of temporal overlap—where memory, presence, and myth quietly inhabit the same space.

  • Chih Hao Shen
    Director
  • Chih Hao Shen
    Writer
  • MFX Films
    Producer
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short
  • Genres:
    Experimental, Sensory Documentar
  • Runtime:
    5 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    March 23, 2026
  • Country of Origin:
    Ukraine
  • Country of Filming:
    Taiwan
  • Language:
    Chinese
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    4:3
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
Director Biography - Chih Hao Shen

Chih Hao Shen is a filmmaker and multidisciplinary creator whose work explores human existence and the fragile relationship between individuals and the worlds they inhabit. Through restrained visual language and poetic storytelling, his films reflect on memory, loss, and the quiet passage of time.

His work has been recognized by international film festivals, including the Rhode Island International Film Festival, In The Palace International Short Film Festival, Fantasporto – Porto International Film Festival, and Asolo Art Film Festival.

His projects have been presented in international industry contexts, including Clermont-Ferrand, Visions du Réel, the Cannes Short Film Corner, Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia, and Oberhausen.

Selected Works

2026 — YinYang Sea — Documentary / Experimental
2026 — Fragments of Us — Experimental
2026 — 10 Seconds — Animation / Experimental
2026 — Everyone Is Leaving, One by One — Documentary
2025 — The Last Atlantis — Animation / Experimental

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Director Statement

I began with a simple intuition: that the world does not belong to the present.

While traveling and observing different places, I often felt that time was not linear but layered. Certain faces, gestures, or encounters seemed to carry traces of something that could not be located in a single moment.

This film is not an attempt to explain that feeling, but to remain within it. By placing disparate images—people, animals, and environments—within the same visual field, I wanted to suspend distinctions between the real and the imagined, the past and the yet-to-come.

Rather than constructing a narrative, I approached the film as a space of perception. A space where time overlaps, and where each presence carries its own myth without needing to be defined.