RED STRING OF FATE Review Reel Asian Film Festival

Hollywood North News was able to take part in the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival including Red String of Fate.

During a civil war between humans and androids, in the year 2090, a robotics engineer tries to bring her fallen lover back to life.
Taken From Official Instagram

The film stars Onna Chan, Lovina Yavari and Melinda Shankar. The directors are Yavari and Lance Fernandes. Onna Chan, Lance Fernandes and Lovina Yavari write on the project.

Lovina Yavari is a Canadian actor, director, artist, fashion designer, and internationally published model in Toronto. She can be seen in DC’s Shazam, Polar, and The Boys.

Lance Fernandes, a graduate of the Toronto Film School, is a commercial director and visual-effects artist.

Sci-Fi VS Short

A Sci-Fi short, from the outside looking in that is an interesting proposal. A lot of the time when you think Sci-Fi on screen there are extensive special effects, exotic locales and the like. Then how do you bring that to a short film that takes place almost entirely in one room. Red String of Fate provides those answers in an engaging short that left me wanting more.

Sci-Fi may make you think about the flashy stuff but what it often delivers are stories from the underrepresented. As a kid the female characters from Sci-Fi shows made an impression on me far more often than those from other genres. That’s because this genre takes chances and Red String of Fate is no exception to that

The Future Is Queer

The central same sex love story is rarely told on screen. Things have been slowly getting better (looking at you Lost Girl) than it was but the progress is still painfully slow. The simple text block at the beginning to drop you into the lore a tried and tested Sci-Fi trope but for a small contained story it represents taking a gamble on whether we buy in or not. The production does a lot with a little the set dressing, the lighting it all adds to the feeling of desperation.

It definitely feels like a bunker which makes sense given the war in which it is set. If this was to be expanded to a feature I would love to know if the war had gone hot. Though obviously there has been violence it doesn’t feel like a traditional war. A short has to start in the action but I still find myself wondering about the technology behind the soul extraction and storage.

The central performance leads me through a mixture of hope and despair as she tries to do the impossible. I would have liked perhaps some talking heads of the time for more context. A quick or interrupted debate around human/AI relationships? Perhaps that might be spoon feeding I don’t know. I do hope for a feature length adaption though to learn more about this world.

If you’re a Sci-Fi fan then follow your nature and take a chance on Red String of Fate.

Official Instagram