#21xoxo is an experimental animated short film that reflects on the impact of 21st century technologies on intimacy, love, and relationships. It revolves around the nihilistic, narcissistic and millennial adventures of a girl in a parallel digital universe interlaced with cyber-love, speed dating, hipster culture, meme and vaporwave aesthetics as well as post-net attitudes. Absurd, surreal, and metamorphic scenes of digital nonsense intertwine with 90s nostalgia, design culture, femininity, the subconscious, and pop art in order to paint a picture of today's Zeitgeist.

It has a mixed media basis where animation and live action fuse in order to explore new connotations and stylistic forms, generating sub-layers, open endings, and distorted realities. Contemporary video clutter (media-related filmic aesthetics that have infiltrated our everyday lives through social media and technological gadgets such as fisheye lenses, Skype angles, GoPro footage, Instagram cadrages etc.) is filtered through the language of animation. This deformation by animation makes us question reality. The inhabitants of #21xoxo are stuck in a sort of cyber-real limbo between our actual world and cyberspace. As hybrids they neither fit into the rules of live action, nor of classical animation. This is a reference to our daily lives where we demonstrate a sort of schizophrenic existence, floating in between our real selves and our online avatars, Facebook profiles and Instagram personas.

The classic narrative structure is glitched to create a fragmented yet still continuous visual experience. This method derives from the same fragmented yet flowing social media experience of 'reading posts,' 'swiping on tinder,' 'cruising on Instagram' and so forth. Just like in #21xoxo, the visual content and information that we receive on these platforms are brief glimpses between narration and abstraction.

Links: https://vimeo.com/373572414

Director: Sine Özbilge
Co-director: Imge Özbilge
Music: Remco Weyns
With support from: VAF - Flanders Audiovisual Fund, Creative Europe Media, Lunanime

Sine Özbilge & Imge Özbilge (TR). The sister directors duo Sine Özbilge and Imge Özbilge work together as each other's mirrors. They experiment with the medium of animation, the 16:9 screen, digital installation art, and the use of mixed media, exploring new connotations and stylistic forms. When writing concepts, Sine focuses on psychological matters and the subconscious, while Imge reflects on the surreality of society. The director duo collaborated on the award-winning short film Camouflage (world premiere at Cannes Film Festival 2017) and #21xoxo (world premiere at BFI Film Festival 2019) and are currently working on their latest short Mosaic.