Eight minutes. One telepath. Infinite paranoia. This short will outstay its runtime in your brain.
Set in the distant future, POLIS is a sci-fi thriller about David Porter, a young telepath whose search for his mother threatens to uncover a utopian society's horrifying secrets.
Cinematography
Blade Runner aesthetics on a shoestring that somehow works harder than most blockbusters.
Direction
Ilous crams more world-building into 8 minutes than most franchises manage in 8 hours.
Editing
Ruthless compression—every cut feels like it's hiding something.
Director
Steven Ilous
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Director Steven Ilous created this as a proof-of-concept for a feature that never materialized, leaving fans theorizing about the expanded world for a decade.
The telepath-as-rebel trope here directly echoes Akira and Scanners, but filtered through the austerity of 2010s indie sci-fi like Beyond the Black Rainbow.
US
