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by Blender Dumbass

Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".

I like student short films. They are often an incredible garbage to sit through. And they are often bad enough that they can compete with Tommy Wiseau's The Room. So I didn't have much in terms of expectations going into Love Clone published on YouTube, directed by a person I found on mastodon who goes by the name Dilman Dila.

As far as I can understand this is a student short film which has something to do with a Dilstories film school which if I'm not mistaken is located somewhere in Africa. Perhaps it was one of the study pieces made as a part of the film-school's curriculum.

There is no budget to this film. Yet with all the limitations, Dilman Dila makes a gripping, suspenseful, sci-fi story that would not be too far from the works of somebody like David Cronenberg, if Cronenberg didn't have money.

The film is surprisingly visual. Often the first film, or a student film will be heavy on either expositional dialogue or voice over to explain what is going on. This film is very visually driven. A lot of the information is in the frame. Even though there is "dialogue" in the film.

The dialogue happens between the same actress Rita Bulya in a kind of mix between something like the Gollum inner dialogue in Lord Of The Rings and a payers of Emily Watson in Breaking The Waves by Lars Von Trier while simultaneously being the "good angel" / "bad angel" story device used in many many films. I personally think that if Dilman Dila kept himself from trying to impress people with an effect, of seeing Rita multiple times in the frame, and instead made the dialogue by using only the cinematic language it could be more interesting. But I guess I'm not the director of this movie, so who I am to decide?

Speaking of effects. This film utilizes Blender to give it a bit of extra oomph. Like there are some sci-fi elements in the films achieved by integrating Blender 3D scenes into the footage of the film. Specifically as a Blender user myself I could notice a few things that could pull other Blender users out of the movie, for instance the use of Blender's default font on some of the texts. But even though there are, I guess there is no way to put it lightly, skill issues, the effects work to a surprising degree. And actually make the movie better, I think.

Happy Hacking!!!




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