Replica

Franz Milec / Italy, Czech Republic / 2025 / World Premiere / 7 min.

synopsis

This adaptation of the storyboard L’amore è un lepidottero (1941) by Italian artist and experimental filmmaker Bruno Munari contrasts dreamy melodrama set against the backdrop of war with the giallo aesthetics of Italian slasher films. The result is a rapid collage that combines computer animation, improvised shots, archival material, and images generated by artificial intelligence. Each element speaks a different visual language, but together they create a paradoxical “handmade” aesthetic in which technology clashes with nostalgia.

“The film's process mirrors reports of Silicon Valley giants pirating terabytes of historical resources and destroying millions of physical books to feed their machines. While their AI garbage pollutes our environment, Replica deliberately processes problematic historical material and purifies it using contemporary tools.” — author's explanation

biography

Franz Milec (b. 1993) is a graduate of the Center for Audiovisual Studies at FAMU. In his artistic practice, he tells stories through data and explores the hallucinations of artificial intelligence. Thematically, he has dealt with urban peripheries, the future of work, the essence of humanity, and technological interventions into it. His films have been screened at prestigious international festivals; he has been presenting his experimental films at Ji.hlava IDFF since 2014, most recently the cosmic horror film Ecopoiesis (2024). He received a special mention in the Czech Experimental Film category for Abstract Horror (2019).