tek's rating: ½

Payload (17:12)
Dust.com; Dust.tv; IMDb; official site; Short of the Week; Stuart Willis; Vimeo; YouTube

This 2012 short film was presented by Dust in 2017.

This is set in 2021, and I didn't see it until 2020, so... it's the near future, and nearer for me than when it was made. But it still seems fairly futuristic, because there's a space elevator. It's also set in a "mining zone" in Australia. So I suppose they use the elevator to send minerals up to a space station, or something. We don't get any idea of what things are like, up there, but life is presumably much better there than on Earth. On Earth, at least in this small corner of it, life is definitely a dystopia.

Anyway, one day a man and his two sons go out to scavenge a crate that has been dropped, presumably from the space colony. But a woman who works for the spaceport gets there before the scavengers can even open the crate, and she does some serious damage to the father. Later, the older son drives his father and younger brother into the city, to get his father medical treatment. While in the hospital, there's a plot twist concerning the younger brother, which I don't want to spoil. I'll just say the older brother wants to work out a deal to get the younger one up to the colony.

It's a really dark story, as you would expect from a dystopian film of any length. It's rather tragic, but also demonstrates deep familial love. And... I don't know what else to tell you.


dystopian shorts index