Illusionists is a short experimental silent film that deconstructs cinema as an art form, viewing it as a manufacture of illusion.
Living in a utopia inspired by Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, He and She feel the emptiness and unbearable monotony of life, hoping to meet someone who will change everything. A mysterious flower seller brings them together, but the beginning of their love story quickly transforms into something else—something subject to the erosion of time, which wears away both the illusion of love and the cinematic illusion itself, as one by one the mechanisms of film are revealed until, in the end, even the fourth wall is broken. The film combines expressionist acting with set design inspired by German Expressionism, posing the question: What is it that makes us fall in love—with other human beings and with movies?
