Connection does not establish reciprocity. Permissions remain local to the session. Observer status confers no onward rights.
Behind the world / A film by Alec Bowman_Clarke
A science-fiction love story. Intimate. Surreal. Procedural. Funny. Bodily.
The film
Ten years ago, two women built a system that connected every person. When Liv chooses to become the first person to never leave it, Mila has to discover whether they can survive when the person she loves is no longer private.
Mila and Liv built COMMON, the system that made direct human connection ordinary. Now Liv is preparing to remain continuously connected, with no person, partner, company or government structurally placed first.
For Mila, this is both a political decision and an intimate one. As institutions scramble to adapt, she tries to preserve something singular between them.
Their private argument becomes public, then physical. An enormous section of the North Sea must be emptied of reciprocal activity for one human body.
At the moment of acquisition, Mila is given the authority to stop it. She doesn’t. Liv remains exactly where she was. Alive. Embodied. Herself. But she never leaves COMMON again.
About the film / Form & feeling
A private relationship played at a civilisation scale. The strange is already ordinary.
01 / Look
Severe, expensive, modern luxury. Real bodies. Snow and heat. Fibre and skin. Beautiful infrastructure that has already accumulated wear. No cyberpunk, holograms or tech-demo imagery. Two people who built the whole world, struggling to exist inside it.
02 / Camera & movement
Composed, conversational, confident. Impossible behaviour happens inside stable frames. Movement is motivated by people and ceremony, not science-fiction energy. Relate the bodies to the world, and the world to the bodies. No judgement, only presence.
03 / Light
Plausible and natural: hotel warmth, snow light, clinical interiors and industrial environments. Expensive daylight. This future isn’t blue and orange. It is allowed to become hyper-real and dramatically present.
04 / Pace
Velocity comes from procedure, decision-making and dialogue. Bodily reactions to emotional damage are given time. People make civilisation-changing decisions quickly; the camera does not hurry them. At times, the pace of change is exhausting.
05 / Sound
Heard through the physical world: fibres, breathing, clothing, water, ventilation, distant machinery, crowd synchrony and rooms changing state. No branded interface sound, on-screen SMS or voice of the machine. People talking like people do when this much is at stake.
06 / Score
Sparse. Sensuous. Not ominous. Music holds beauty and grief without warning us that technology is dangerous. Somehow, we understand that it is. The people in this film have expensive taste; the score reflects this.
A cinematic conversation
Touchstones for feeling, form and scale.
| Reference | Filmmaker / year | The connection |
|---|---|---|
| Lost in Translation | Sofia Coppola / 2003 | Loneliness inside privilege. People made tiny by beautiful architecture. Intimacy occurring almost accidentally. |
| San Junipero | Owen Harris / 2016 | Speculative life photographed as desirable, sensual and emotionally sincere. The future is not the threat. Love and change can both be beautiful. |
| After Yang | Kogonada / 2021 | A future already absorbed into clothing, homes, bodies, manners and ordinary life. Technology is tactile and domestic rather than displayed. |
| Decision to Leave | Park Chan-wook / 2022 | Desire expressed through procedure, distance, observation, phones, proximity and framing. Two people can occupy the same image and still be structurally unable to reach one another. |
Private consequences / public infrastructure
A wedding becomes a test of whether intimacy can remain local once COMMON’s rules change. One procedural correction produces a very physical consequence.
For Mila’s birthday, her childhood home is rebuilt inside an aquarium. The film’s most extravagant attempt to prove that one person can still be uniquely known ends by killing something that should never have been theirs to touch.
Mila tries to recover while aviation, medicine, defence and family law arrive at once. The bathers are still connected, and it is supposed to be quiet. The emergency begins to enter the room with her.
Their private argument continues over dinner inside national infrastructure. From here, the scale keeps widening until civilisation physically clears part of the North Sea for one human body.
Acquisition / The North Sea
An enormous section of the North Sea is emptied of reciprocal activity.
Their private argument has become a physical condition of the world. Civilisation clears a space so that Liv’s transition can happen.
Acquisition and continuity are not the same event. At the moment that separates them, Mila is given the authority to stop it.
The language of acquisition ↗Project status / from the supplied film guide
“I believe big ideas can be deeply human.”
Alec’s work combines sharp observation with a love of the strange: ordinary lives under extraordinary pressure. JANUARY IN SUMMER holds global scale and intimate detail in the same frame.
Full feature screenplay available on request.
Contact AlecCoastal and interior photography: Alec Bowman_Clarke. COMMON logos supplied with the project. North Sea diagram supplied by Alec Bowman_Clarke. Film references are presented as text; no screenshots from the referenced films are reproduced.
