Country: Netherlands, USA
Year: 2025
Duration: 13'
When Dax decides to break up with her partner using a high-tech “soft landing” protocol, nothing goes as planned. Set in a near-future world where emotions can be programmed, a dark comedy about control, intimacy, and the absurd lengths we’ll go to avoid vulnerability. A film that unpacks the illusion of perfection in relationships – with a surreal, hilarious twist.
Biography
film director
Tamara Shogaolu
is an Emmy® Award-winning, Peabody-nominated director, writer, and artist whose work merges cinematic storytelling with bold experimentation. Hailed by “Forbes,” “The Guardian,” and “Vogue” as a visionary voice in film and emerging media, she crafts stories that are intimate, subversive, and deeply human. Her projects have received top honors at the Sundance Film Festival (2023), SXSW (2022), and IDFA in Amsterdam (2021 and 2023). Her work has also been supported by the Sundance Institute and has screened at MoMA, Tribeca, and leading institutions around the world. She has directed and written for Netflix, PBS, and Frontline, and written for Sony Pictures Animation. She is also a three-time nominee for the Gouden Kalf, the Netherlands’ top film and television award.
FILMOGRAFIA
Biladi (cm, 2011), Lisa (cm, 2011), Cradle and All (cm, 2013), Dian (cm, 2015), Waria Streets (cm, 2016), Half a Life (cm, 2017), Boys on Film 18: Heroes (2018), Another Dream (cm, 2019), They Call Me Asylum Seeker (2020), Echoes of Silence (cm, 2020), The Braid of Time (cm, 2021), Un(re)solved (videogame, 2021), Music Dreams (cm, 2021), Anouschka (videogame, 2023), Oryza Healing Ground (cm, 2024), Something Real (cm, 2025).
Declaration
film director
“This film is a love letter to imperfection. It’s about our increasingly digital world and the emotional shortcuts we take to protect ourselves – from rejection, from vulnerability, from each other. I made Something Real to laugh at those shortcuts, but also to ask: what are we losing in the name of efficiency? At a time when everything is curated and connection is a commodity, Something Real reminds us that the messiness we try to avoid may actually be what makes us most human.”
Cast
& Credits
DIRECTOR: Tamara Shogaolu. SCREENPLAY: Becky Mandelbaum, Tamara Shogaolu. CINEMATOGRAPHY: Robert Nachman. FILM EDITING: Faroukh Virani. PRODUCTION DESIGN: Robert Brecko. COSTUME DESIGN: James Carroll. MUSIC: Marcin Mazurek. SOUND: Reid Andersen. CAST: Sasheer Zamata, Tommy Dewey. PRODUCTION: Constanza Castro, Doménica Castro, Kimberly Hwang.
CONTACT: Tamara Shogaolu tamara@adoatopictures.com
