MNEMOPHRENIA

(director/writer: Eirini Konstantinidou; screenwriters: story by Konstantinidou/Robin King; cinematographers: Mirko Beutler (part one: “The Beginning”), Petros Nousias (part three: “Homo Mnemonicus”), Richard Thomas (part two: “Total Cinema”); editor: Giorgio Galli; music: Corey Zack; cast: Tim Seyfert (Douglas), Freya Berry (Jeanette Harper), John Morton (Himself), Angela Peters (Keri Taylor), Robin King (Nicholas Morgan), Tallulah Sheffield (Robyin), Robert Milton Wallace (Charlie Nicholas), Cally Lawrence (Tessa Fox), Jaime Laird (Will Hall), Domenic O’Flynn (Michael Murphy); Runtime: 78; MPAA Rating: NR; producer: Eirini Konstantinidou; ; 2019-UK)

“Chilling futuristic sci-fi drama.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

A self-funded indie (took seven years to make) by Eirini Konstantinidou, a PhD lecturer on film at England’s Essex University. Eirini in her debut as a feature film director, after a couple of prize-winning short films, helms this chilling futuristic sci-fi drama with purpose and conviction. It deals with themes about Virtual Reality, artificial memories and identity. Her doctorate thesis in film forms the basis of this well-made educational film, filled with valid research material on Mnemophrenia (a condition whose name combines “mneme” and “schizophrenia”).

There’s a limited audience for such a challenging film on an advancing science.

We learn that Mnemophrenia is defined as: ‘A condition or a state characterized by the coexistence of real and artificial memories, which affects the subject’s sense of identity’.

Three interlocking stories are used to show the impact of advanced VR on different generations of the same family. As their real and virtual experiences become almost indistinguishable and the characters descend into a psychosis. Eirini expands her previous short film Mnemophrenia: The Beginning (2013), to start the film off. The other two stories follow from the first.

This intelligent film (if you can imagine a sci-fi film you can learn something from its lecture while also being dramatically entertaining), won a prize at the prestigious Boston Science Fiction Film Festival. 

REVIEWED ON 9/10/2020  GRADE: B