Demeter Lorant is an editor, visual effects specialist and director of currently 8 shorts, with “Possessed by Aliens” (2020) having won a plethora of awards from festivals around the world. His latest work, “SILEO” is a futuristic animation that takes place in the far future, a world only inhabited by artificial intelligence.
“SILEO” review is part of the Submit Your Film Initiative
Geff_325520-BD is a fixer robotic unit working in a big factory, Sileo.co, repairing broken core units, and there seems to be an endless supply of them. The more units he fixes, the more are necessary. At one point, he makes a decision to find his creator and get some answers regarding his identity, particularly the whether he will be able to retain it. His trip has him seeing different things than what he was accustomed to, but the meeting with his boss does not go exactly as expected.
Demeter Lorant directs an animation that functions as a metaphor regarding factory workers and the ‘capital', in a distinct, anticapitalistic message. Geff, who represents the workers, goes about his job every day, working non-stop, without ever questioning his life and his role. When a thought comes to him however, in a comment regarding how thinking outside the box can lead to various types of freedom as much as trouble for the ‘authority', he is starting to realize that he is just a tool and nothing more. As such, his trip outside his station shows him that there are other things in life also, as the swarm of ants he meets seem to be a metaphor for the benefits of acting in a group, or companionship if you prefer, something Geff has never experienced.
The meeting, and the way the boss treats Geff is another metaphor for how the capital treats the worker, with the fact that the former, as soon as he realizes that the worker does not have a voice (in a metaphor about speaking up for your rights) he proceeds in reprogramming him, essentially replacing him with another model, in a yet another metaphor about how the authorities perceive the workers.
Apart from context, the artform here is also very interesting, with the intense colors, the attention to detail and the flow of the motion highlighting Lorant's work in every technical aspect of the movie, which reminds somewhat of video games, but in a more artful fashion. The job done on the sound is also convincing, with Nate Goodwyn's narration being pleasant and the various sounds fitting and detailed, with the one of the water, and the “dangerous” one close to the end being the highlight.
Truth be told, creating empathy for what is actually an axis and a hand was a difficult aspect, but considering Lorant's goal, of presenting the aforementioned social and philosophical comments, this does not emerge as a significant flaw, with the overall quality of “SILEO”, both contextually and technically, being on a very high level.
