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!