Post-Human Theater

World at Stake

20min, 2025, Austria

Total Refusal

A golfer fails to strike, a soccer team plays against itself and a rally co-driver faces an identity crisis. They are surrounded by an audience unable to act. Shot in sports video games, the film "World At Stake" turns the ordering principles of victory and defeat upside down and negotiates social roles between individual sovereignty and collective passivity. In the face of catastrophe, a feeling of political powerlessness remains. Nothing less than the world is at stake.

Kinderfilm

11min, 2025, Austria

Total Refusal

It's an ordinary day in the game Grand Theft Auto V: The streets are crowded with cars; people follow their routines, barbecue in their gardens or sunbath on the beach. And yet the game world is marked by a grave absence: a missing future that was suspended out of safety concerns. Unable to name the void, protagonist Edgar follows the traces of what is missing in the algorithm of his reality. Exploring the uncanniness of his normality, he rediscovers a beautiful yet nightmarish world.

About the Filmmaker

Total Refusal

The artist, researcher and filmmaker collective and pseudo-marxist media guerrilla Total Refusal appropriates contemporary video games and writes about games and politics. They upcycle the resources of mainstream video games, creating political narrations in the form of videos, interventions, live performances, lectures and workshops. Since its foundation in 2018, their work has been awarded with more than 50 awards and honorary mentions - like the European Film Award or the Best Short Direction Award at the Locarno Film Festival.

The current members of Total Refusal are: Susanna Flock, Adrian Jonas Haim, Jona Kleinlein, Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner & Michael Stumpf

Happy New Year, Jim

9min, 2022, Italy

Andrea Gatopoulos

It's New Year's Eve. Jim and Morten are playing videogames all night long, like every day. But Morten tonight is uncomfortable.

Eschaton AD

8min, 2023, Italy

Andrea Gatopoulos

An apocalyptic film is suddenly interrupted by a strange ad. A man in suit and tie appears to deliver a message to the spectators and the director.

The Eggregores’ Theory

15min, 2024, Italy

Andrea Gatopoulos

He does not remember much from that time. Things have faded, like the color of a painting after too much light. The only thing that bothers him is this music. It keeps popping up… He thinks he forget what it meant. All he knows, for sure, is that he cannot get it out of his head.

About the Director

Andrea Gatopoulos

Andrea Gatopoulos is a film director, producer and distributor born in 1994 in Pescara. He studied cinema with Werner Herzog and Radu Jude. Graduated with honors in 2016 in Literature, Music and Entertainment with the thesis "Virtual reality and culture of the image in the civilisation of entertainment". He is the founder of the production company Il Varco and of Gargantua Film Distribution. He is the artistic director of Il Varco - Short Film Festival, four times in the Top 100 of the best festivals on FilmFreeway. His productions have been presented in more than 120 festivals including Cannes Quinzaine, Locarno Film Festival, Venice Critics' Week SIC @ SIC, Camerimage, Rotterdam IFFR, Nastri d'Argento and David di Donatello.

As a director, he shot "Polepole" in 2021, presented at the Oscar Qualifying Energa Camerimage festival and Visioni Italiane, "Happy new Year, Jim" in 2022, presented at Quinzaine des Réaliseateurs in Cannes Film Festival and "Eschaton Ad" in 2023, presented at Locarno Film Festival.