The Loop
Ashim searches for his daughter inside a blizzard that keeps returning. Outside the dream, someone is using his grief to hold his mind in place.
Science-fiction thriller
Recursive Dreams
In a future where memory has become entertainment, a mother breaks into a grieving man’s home to steal the one thing he cannot bear to lose.
Watch the film
A memory heist inside a grief loop.
The full short. Seventeen minutes inside a stolen memory.
Fragments of the Dream
A loop, a theft, a machine, a video.
Four pressure points inside the heist, and four ways a stolen memory refuses to stay stolen.
The Theft
Screens are obsolete. Human memory is the commodity that replaced them. Zin and Ray break into Ashim’s home to take what is left of his.
The Machine
The machine holds Ashim inside one moment, the worst one, while it copies the memories he has tried hardest to protect.
The Video
On an old CRT television, Meera appears again: not as data, not as currency, but as a daughter preserved on tape.
Fragment 01
The Loop
Ashim searches for his daughter inside a blizzard that keeps returning. Outside the dream, someone is using his grief to hold his mind in place.
Fragment 02
The Theft
Screens are obsolete. Human memory is the commodity that replaced them. Zin and Ray break into Ashim’s home to take what is left of his.
Fragment 03
The Machine
The machine holds Ashim inside one moment, the worst one, while it copies the memories he has tried hardest to protect.
Fragment 04
The Video
On an old CRT television, Meera appears again: not as data, not as currency, but as a daughter preserved on tape.
Premise
The mind has become the screen.
Zin lives in a future where curated memories are uploaded directly into the mind. To pay for her sick daughter’s medicine, she and Ray break into the home of Ashim, a reclusive man whose own daughter was lost in a blizzard.
While Ashim sleeps, they trap him inside an endless loop of that memory and begin copying what remains of his past. When he wakes, the theft becomes something more intimate, violent and human.
Festival run
Nine selections. Two wins. Now open to viewers.
Before its public release, Recursive Dreams played genre, sci-fi and international festivals, earning two production design wins and nominations across sci-fi, thriller and performance categories.
- 2 wins
- 4 nominations
- 9 official selections
Awards
Two production design wins led the festival run.
British Film Designers Guild Awards
The British Short Film Awards
Nominations
FilmQuest
New Renaissance Film Festival London
New Renaissance Film Festival London
The British Short Film Awards · Patricia Allison
Official selections
ScreamfestTrieste Science+Fiction FestivalSt. Louis International Film FestivalBritish Urban Film FestivalFilmQuestLandshut Short Film FestivaldeadCenter Film FestivalNew Renaissance Film Festival LondonTacoma Film Festival
Director’s Note
“If memories can be bought, copied and erased, what is left of the self?”
Recursive Dreams began with a fascination with memory and the philosophy of the self. I wanted to make a science-fiction thriller about a future where entertainment no longer sits on a screen. It enters the mind directly.
The film is built around people under pressure: Zin stealing to protect her child, Ashim clinging to the memory of his daughter, and Ray treating identity as something disposable. The technology is speculative, but the emotional question is simple. What do we become when the things that make us human can be extracted, sold or wiped clean?
Stills
Blizzard glare. Stolen memory. Ashim’s living room tightening around them.
Cast
Freddy Carter
Patricia Allison
Shaq B. Grant
Key Crew
Written and directed byMax Vanderspuy
Produced byDaniel Panyko and Daniel Jewel
Director of PhotographyNicolas Booth
Production DesignerOlavo Abrantes
Music byRebecca Hurford
EditorIvan Kraye
Sound DesignerZoltan Kadnar
Casting byYvonne Lawlor
Inside Ashim’s living room, the machine keeps copying.
Feature development
The feature is in development.
Recursive Dreams is being expanded from a short proof of concept into a feature film. The world is larger, the heist deeper, and the question more personal: what survives when identity can be copied? For producing, financing or distribution conversations, contact Viridian Films.