《最后8分钟》"The Last 8 Minutes"
2023
Mandarin, narrative
Directed, Written, Produced by Jay Zhao
Full film preview available
Duration: 8 mins
Tagline
Time counts down to 8 minutes, the real last 8 minutes. Of everything.
Logline
"The Last 8 Minutes " is a surrealistic film about a critically ill young girl who dreams about the reunion with her passed-away grandmother in the last 8 minutes of her short life.
Synopsis
Ting Mu, a critically ill young girl lies on the hospital bed and suddenly entraps in a dream in the middle of nowhere. While she figures out where she is, she finds an alarm clock counting from 8 minutes left to 12. She soon sees a lady dressed in white. Ting Mu tries to seek help from the lady, but when she reaches the lady, her dream switches to another place. Ting Mu finds the same lady again in the new dream again. When she finally sees the lady's face, she realises that it is her passed-away grandmother. They hug each other in the beautiful dream and Ting Mu's body in the hospital stops stop heart-beating. The time on the clock in the hospital just passes 12.
Director Statement
'The Last 8 Minutes' is not only a short film but more of an experience. It embraces surrealism with combined genres of experimental and fiction films. As many films have already engaged with the topic of dreams, this film innovates to question the experience and time in one’s mind. It provides an experience of nearly dying, before dying, imagining what humans would see and meet in the last few moments before the afterlife. The film is inspired by the scientistic hypothesis that humans might experience a flashback of their life before death, and meet a relative who has passed away already in the dream. The film designs and renders such experiences to the audience. The purpose is for immersion and feeling. The film is also structurist, as the running time is exactly 8 minutes corresponding to the title and the dream of past moments before death.
This short film was created by uni students from UNSW, USyd and WSU in Sydney in 2023. As an independent project, the crew travelled to different remote places to find the best dreamy atmosphere for the story.
