2021 XXI

XXI (2021)
Short experimental film by Lola Lustosa
Produced by METASTARWORK PRODUCTION

Developed during the pandemic year of 2021, XXI unfolds as a ritual of transition staged between body and projection, presence and echo. A solitary figure moves through an artificial chromatic environment where shadow becomes a second agent—an autonomous double that expands, distorts, and redefines identity.

Through stylized movement and saturated magenta–cyan tonal fields, the film constructs a theatrical space that feels simultaneously intimate and extraterrestrial. The performer appears suspended between animation and embodiment, suggesting a genderless entity emerging from a threshold condition rather than inhabiting a stable role.

Rather than narrative progression, XXI operates through metamorphic states. The body splits, multiplies, and reconfigures itself in relation to its own silhouette, proposing identity as something projected, transferable, and continuously rewritten. The shadow becomes not absence but extension—an epistemological companion.

Created in isolation yet oriented toward transformation, the work reflects a historical pause in which physical space collapsed into screen space. Within this suspension, XXI imagines the body as interface and the stage as a portal into a speculative “new order” of perception.