The Cinematheque

“For years, my work has blended fact and fiction into video installations that both create and defy logic … Mahyad and my collaboration began during lockdown with a conversation about a connection to a geographic location and the strange experience of traveling so easily through the World Wide Web while being physically stuck in one place.”

Mika Rottenberg

Set in a speculative, post-pandemic near future, Remote, co-created by Mika Rottenberg and Mahyad Tousi, follows a quarantined woman (Okwui Okpokwasili) in her sealed-off apartment as she slips into an immersive rabbit hole while playing an interactive online game. Through this digital social space, she becomes entangled with a community of women across the globe, all devoted followers of a charismatic South Korean dog-groomer performer (Joony Kim). What begins as a shared pastime gradually evolves into something more uncanny. Through prolonged virtual intimacy and exposure to one another’s private worlds, the women uncover mysterious portals hidden within their own homes. As thresholds begin to blur boundaries between physical and digital space, their discoveries ripple outward, triggering unexpected and potentially universe-altering consequences that challenge notions of connection, isolation, and reality itself.

Introduced by programmer Tobin Gibson.