Falling through | Daniil Alexandrov

Dying from a deadly computer virus, a virtual reality software becomes its own player and undergoes a series of near-death experiences in its last few seconds of existence. The source code which, without realising that it’s not a real person, finds itself locked up in the deadly vortex “falling through” into the abyss of total annihilation. We follow its journey down the rabbit hole, where the protagonist takes part in mysterious rituals, undergoes electrical initiations and meets the ghosts of its own instances, the signals of the rapid failure of various parts of code. When we lose the protagonist in the whirlpool of its own emotions and reflection at the end of the film, we ask ourselves - what happens to the code after it’s been deleted or made dysfunctional? Is such dysfunction seen as such by the code itself, and can it self-reflect and reimagine its own purpose?