Connection Lost

An even stronger film this year from one of the few teams to consistantly offer tonally grounded, emotive work.
The "after-life" segments are particularly effective, with simple but effective marriages between technical and emotional narrative threads.
The narrative suffers slightly from the use of montage, as visually stunning, but familiar genre elements are presented, as opposed to specific character beats.
Really excellent use of locations; the visual deviations are a boone to the pacing, and assist in lifting the heavy tone. We are reminded of vitality, despite the subject.
Finally, the hacking screens were quite impressive, and didnt' make me cringe; it may be the first time someone has achieved this in cinematic history.

This film is technically well produced, but I can't help feeling it's the exact same story as last year, just told from a different angle. Please don't get me wrong here: if this is a real situation that one of the team has been going through over the past two years, and making films on it is cathartic, this is entirely understandable and I am not criticising it. However, if it is a fictional story, it would be great to see this team branch out and explore a different concept next year.

Considering the film as a standalone production though: The custom computer program looked great, and was an important detail to add realism to the concept. And the progression from more complex memories to an empty space with hospital clothing was a good visual illustration of memories fading on the way to death.

Another year, another heart wrenching film from the qweens! One of the ONLY teams in the city with the guts to make a truly emotional film, and that's worth celebrating. This could have easily been another silly heist movie where someone hacks into the mainframe to rewire the system, but that's not the game this team is playing and I have so much respect for taking the big emotional swings! Really impressive work on display here. No notes ❤️

What a lovely, sad, and touching hacker film. It actually brought me to tears, you are too good at crying lol! All the memories being tinged with knowing this is the last time, those looks of quiet devastation while reliving them, they destroyed me haha! You did a masterful job of pulling us into the grief he was going through, and cutting to the white screen behind as they clung to each other was a good choice. It made us focus entirely on them as they said goodbye. You conveyed so much in such a limited time. Thanks for the beautiful film

So sad, so beautiful. Oh the pain was so real. Great acting.
I really loved that this is a hacker film... yet not at all in the usuall way we think of a hacker film, cool original modern take on it.

Please forgive me while I go off on a tangent.

The year is 2016. I leave the cult I was born into. I am still deeply in the closet. I unexpectedly find myself in a 48Hours film where I play Charlie Flowers – a gay partner who gets sick and dies. I'm terrified of what the Christians I left behind will think if they hear I'm in a gay film

The year is 2026. I make a queer film about leaving a cult. The ending is deliberately ambiguous. A highly credible interpretation is that the gay protagonist gets married but dies.

Two years in a row, the Screen Qweens have likewise made a film about a queer partner who dies. I alluded to this last year, but I wonder if we make these films because a happy queer relationship seems so unattainable. We grieve for a relationship that never arrives. This grief invites comparison with beautiful relationships cut tragically short by death. Or perhaps queer love feels so precious, and queer lives so traumatic, that we fear the loss of love or see it as inevitable.

I have no answers, but I wished to muse over those parallels.

Anyway, Connection Lost is beautiful. What an innovative use of the genre! Believable sci-fi and earnest modern romance weave together. The emotional performances must have been exhausting to deliver. The compositing at the end was a great way to visualise the hacked brain concept, with memories fading away for the final goodbye.

I love how Screen Qweens have some continuity of actors between their films, yet never exactly the same actors, so that we are always presented with a fresh duo.

I selfishly would like to see something different from Screen Qweens next year, but what I want doesn't matter. If Screen Qweens choose to keep honing their treatment of these intense emotional themes then that is their prerogative! A film that has multiple people in the theatre crying is a triumph. Long may we continue to see moving queer stories in the performing arts!

What I Liked:
Great to see a creative swing taken on the hacker genre by going for something more personal in what is being hacked – memories in this case, so to say goodbye properly. It’s a selfish motive but completely understandable! The tech itself was not overexplained - in fact, it was quickly shown and easily understood. Great! Nicely shot and edited together with just a couple of clunky moments at the start of the “in limbo” scenes.

Take it or leave it:
This concept is nothing new (see Ghost, What Dreams May Come, Afterlife) – all about the difficulty of letting go or getting one more chance to say goodbye. I’m a relatively hardened soul when it comes to grief and loss, so I don’t feel much when it comes to films like these – unless it’s about children (crying, crying). I too think the use of montage was a very stock-standard way to go and typically only channeled happy memories (or limbo experiences?), which I gave similar commentary on with last year’s Screen Qweens film. Not everything has to be doom and gloom, but there’s little conflict in this film – aside from a couple of subtle looks knowing this won’t last. It’s all very beautiful times – they led a perfect life (and in death) or only chose the happy times to explore. Fair enough, but give me some darkness, some struggle, and resolve these! There must be unresolved questions still!

Final hot air:
Another really bittersweet film from this team. They play to their strengths and produce films people appreciate greatly. A good example that not everything needs to be silly, lowbrow fun. Great work!

In a sea of silly nonsense films, it's always nice to see Screen Qweens' heartfelt contribution sailing strong!

Like last year, the themes of this film are ones that take courage to take on. You got praise for sincerity, and taking an approach to a genre uniquely. I respect a team that's willing to tell a serious tale, even if it includes a theme that's fully detatched from reality (in this case, hacking memories). Although in this case, perhaps trying to find the balance of hacker/heist and emotional beats didn't get you the marks you were hoping for.

The concept is strong - I particularly loved Xavier's delivery of 'Your life flashes before your eyes'. This setup justifies what follows, and the final shot is a punch to the gut, the piano coming in was touched by an angel.

I know this team has huge ambition! And we'd love to see you take out the entire country one day, so with that in mind, here's our main takeaway of where we think this may have fallen a little flat. A big tone of the hacker/heist genre is *tension*, and the choice to reveal the hacker function early meant most of the ride was maybe a little too slow. I hate feeling like I'm about to be a backseat driver here, but there were a couple of ideas that we thought may have helped drive this story into something with higher stakes, and therefore more of a hack/heist experience.

Perhaps the whole memories realm has these tense glitchy moments, with the reveal of the hacking being saved for a bit later into the story, or perhaps the risks of hacking ones mind are higher and could potentially harm the partner, or what if the hacking is forbidden, and your lead has snuck into the hospital room - a risk of getting caught would certainly raise the stakes. These sorts of themes and ideas would be our contribution to the writers room if we were trying to explore how to get the genre more embedded, and as you know, judges can be a stickler for genre :) Beyond this thought, we have no other notes for you really, the rest of the craft on display here is truly wonderful. You're a team that knows what you're doing, and so anything else we might think of to critique I'm sure you've already considered.

THE BEST THING: Another strong contribution from the team you can count on to get the waterworks flowing, with another electric performance and chemistry from your actors.

THE NEXT THING: Like Mark, I'm in the camp of keen to see something completely off base from Screen Qweens next year - not nessecarily because I think you'll get a better film out of trying something new, but because I'd hope you'd take joy in the challenge, and I know we would all take joy in watching something outrageous. It's up to you guys though. This formula for 48hours is certainly not the broken clock method or anything like that. It's reliable for the judging panel regardless of their turnover rate, you're likely to continue to do well even if you do this to this sort of vibe each year. But for me? selfishly? I'm keen to see that sass and charm from your team intro bleed into the rest of your runtime!

I have such admiration for y'all! For most teams (rip focus included), comedy is the way to go in this competition. It's easy, risk-free, and with a five-minute limit, it is much easier to make a silly sketch than it is a drama. Here you are back again to make us feel, and once again you've pulled it off! Such a well-made short, I love the way your films look. They're so clean! You capture beauty in the mundane so well!

I seriously have to thank you, team, for making films like this. It is teams like Screen Qweens that really inspired us to give a serious film a go. We have enough comedy in this competition! That being said, I'm so here for a Screen Qweens comedy. I'm here for anything! Look forward to watching whatever you cook up on the big screen again next year :)