When I See You At The End Of The World
Yaqi Liu
United States of America / 2025 / Fiction, Experimental / 6’56”I2601977
SYNOPSIS
When I See You At The End Of The World (7 min, 2025) is a poetic, genre-bending short film that blends soft sci-fi, romance, fantasy, and experimental storytelling. Set in a dark, confined space, the film follows Meg, a silent figure navigating a world that repeatedly collapses around her. As she searches for meaning in these cycles of destruction, her voiceover carries us through what feels like a personal reckoning. But slowly, a quiet shift reveals the truth: Meg is a small plastic toy figure. The apocalypses she endures are not her own, but the emotional aftershocks of a human girl, Jessica, who, after a painful breakup, repeatedly dismantles the miniature world she once built with her ex. What begins as a melancholic love story unfolds into a layered reflection on grief, memory, and emotional projection. The film becomes a quiet meditation on the absurdity of existence—how even a tiny, inanimate figure can absorb the full weight of human sorrow, and how an imagined, confined space can mirror the vast loneliness of the universe. The boundaries between human and non-human, real and symbolic, collapse, leaving behind a poetic metaphor for the fragility and theatricality of our presence in the cosmos. Told through abstract imagery, minimal dialogue, and a dreamlike voiceover, the film invites viewers into a surreal, emotionally charged space where identity, memory, and materiality dissolve. Created by a diverse, award-winning team of emerging filmmakers from China, Europe, and the U.S., When I See You At The End Of The World is a small, strange story about loss, survival, and the echoes left behind when love collapses.