In general, when a film begins with a few agitated waves throwing a person’s body on a shore, we expect to witness a Robinsoniad, an exotic experience supported, most of the time, by the discovery of a new civilization. However, ‘714’ is a short film that deceives such expectations, even if the experience of the main character is as intense as that of a real shipwrecked man. Indeed, the protagonist imagined by director Alex Pychtin doesn’t have an extreme encounter with a new civilization, but with himself. Thus, this sci-fi short film opposes in an almost neurotic wavering between two realities the appearance and essence of a protagonist who seems to be the last survivor of the Earth whose mission is to save the planet. The dilemma this project launches concerns, instead, the boundary between these two avatars. Who is the real character: the one who dreams while being in a kind of coma orchestrated by a hyper-developed technology or the one who experiences at a tactile level the ephemeral beauty of the island landscape? The answer doesn’t have to be obvious, since this change of perspectives is, in itself, the main engine of triggering the character’s inner conflict.
