City of Panic

The city of panic is the place where nobody has the time anymore to get close to each other, for the caresses for the pleasure or for the slowness of whispered words. Advertisement exalts and stimulates the libidinous attention, person to person communication multiplies the promises of encounters, but these promises never get fulfilled. Desire turns into anxiety and time contracts.                                                      Franco Berardi

A distraught man in a nice suit pulls into the parking lot of a modernist interstate gas station.  He is surrounded by the homogenous contours of gray asphalt, ostentatious signs and banal advertising.  He makes the cardinal sin and becomes self-aware of his surroundings.  Resisting the perfect harmony and flow of good and services, he decides to sit on the curb and wait without a goal or objective.  What he discovers within this temporary free space is the surreal schizophrenia of alienated inhabitants, all incapable of feeling empathy until a final tragic moment.

City of Panic is a short film currently in development to be shot in Los Angeles, CA.