Digital Prophecies: Andrea Gatopoulos at Pragueshorts

Director, producer, distributor, teacher, editor, and cinematographer Andrea Gatopoulos is coming to the Pragueshorts festival. Audiences can look forward to a programme of short films to which this pioneering filmmaker has contributed, as well as a masterclass in which Gatopoulos will present alternative approaches and tools in film development, financing, production, and distribution.

Thursday, 26 February, 6:30 pm
Andrea Gatopoulos: Digital Prophecies (short film programme), Small Hall, Světozor Cinema

Friday, 27 February, 11:30 am
Masterclass, Small Hall, Světozor Cinema

Friday, 27 February, 6:30 pm
Andrea Gatopoulos: Digital Prophecies (short film programme), Ponrepo Cinema

Only 31 years old, Gatopoulos has in a short time become one of the most distinctive and original figures in contemporary European cinema. In his short films, he explores the dark and often melancholic corners of virtual reality. His works intertwine critiques of progressivism and capitalism with motifs of disobedience, virtual worlds, and disillusion, while retaining an intimate, fragile longing for simple emotions.

Andrea Gatopoulos’s films have been screened at more than 450 festivals worldwide, including Cannes, Locarno, and Venice. It was at the Venice Film Festival in 2024 that his short film The Eggregores’ Theory premiered—the first AI-generated film ever selected for the festival’s official programme.

Gatopoulos has participated in workshops led by major figures of world cinema such as Radu Jude, Werner Herzog, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. His projects also represent new models of filmmaking: efficient, low-budget, and free from traditional financing structures.

The block of selected films presents the many different roles Andrea Gatopoulos plays, including three examples of his work as director. Happy New Year, Jim (2022), a finely sketched depiction of digital isolation, was the first film set in the world of computer games to be screened at the Cannes Film Festival. Eschaton Ad, shown a year later at Locarno, plays cleverly with the viewer’s mind as it announces the apocalyptic new era of artificial intelligence. The Eggregores’ Theory, which was shown at the Venice Film Festival, takes place in a dystopian future and uses a black-and-white AI aesthetic to tell an intimate love story set in a world where art has been outlawed.

Complementing this colorful selection of films are two others, Homunculus and The Most Beautiful Man in the World, that were made thanks to Gatopoulos’s Nouvelle Bug avant-garde film workshop. And the final film is The Lost Memories of Trees, a contemplative work shot in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, on which Gatopoulos was involved as producer.