Private Project

Nation of Neural Traffic

Within a vast neural nation sustained by the circulation of attention, bodies drift through unstable networks where identities fragment and meanings continuously mutate.

Emerging from lived experience in Taiwan—a place shaped by layered histories, competing narratives, and unresolved political realities—the film transforms perception into an allegorical animated world. Networks become landscapes, signals become environments, and collective consciousness takes material form.

As familiar structures begin to dissolve, another mode of organization gradually emerges: anonymous, collective, and difficult to name.

Nation of Neural Traffic is a journey through a society where consciousness itself has become a contested territory.

  • CHIH HAO SHEN
    Director
  • CHIH HAO SHEN
    Writer
  • MFX Films
    Producer
  • Project Type:
    Animation, Experimental
  • Genres:
    Experimental, Animation
  • Runtime:
    6 minutes 30 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    June 1, 2026
  • Country of Origin:
    Taiwan
  • Country of Filming:
    Taiwan
  • Language:
    No Dialogue
  • 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 an animation and documentary filmmaker whose work explores human existence, memory, and time through restrained visual storytelling.

His debut work received recognition from Rhode Island IFF. His short film 10 Seconds was selected by In The Palace, Fantasporto, and Asolo Art Film Festival (2026). His documentary YinYang Sea won the Grand Prix at Asolo Art Film Festival (2026).

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

Beyond filmmaking, he has worked in visual design and digital product development, including licensed merchandise design for The Lord of the Rings franchise in the Chinese-language market, visual work at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, and founded and leads a software development company developing animation and visual effects tools within the Apple ecosystem.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Nation of Neural Traffic emerged from my experience of living in Taiwan, where history, politics, media, and collective memory continuously intersect in everyday life.

Rather than directly representing specific events or political systems, I was interested in how these forces shape perception itself. Histories, narratives, and structures of power often operate invisibly, influencing how reality is experienced, interpreted, and shared.

Through animation, I sought to transform these conditions into an allegorical perceptual space. In the film, networks become landscapes, attention becomes infrastructure, and bodies move through environments governed by unstable systems of meaning. Political reality is not explained but translated into sensations, rhythms, and visual transformations.

I am less interested in ideological positions than in the experience of living within overlapping and often contradictory realities. The film approaches politics not as a subject to illustrate, but as a condition that permeates perception, memory, and collective imagination.

By reconfiguring lived reality into a surreal animated world, I hope to create a space where history, power, and consciousness can be encountered indirectly—as fluid forces that remain in constant transformation.