In Another Breath

  • Writer & Director

A short AI-assisted film in which an awkward sneeze on a crowded tram opens onto a tactile felt world — and an imagined lifetime of connection.

Role
Writer & Director
Format
Wordless AI-assisted short film
Runtime
2 min 55 sec
Awards
First Prize — Curious Refuge Feel-Good AI Film Competition (2026)
Overview
In Another Breath is a short, wordless AI-assisted film that begins with a painfully awkward moment on a crowded tram and drifts into a tactile felt-world fantasy of care, intimacy, and time passing. Blending live-action tension with handcrafted-looking AI imagery, the film plays with how quickly strangers misread one another — and how much can change when a small moment is allowed to soften.

In Another Breath — full short film.

Process

This was a loose and playful project to make, but also a very precise one.

I wanted the film to move between two opposite visual languages: a cramped, fluorescent live-action tram and a tactile blue-and-pink felt universe that feels handmade, warm, and slightly absurd. The emotional hinge between them is a sneeze — treated not just as a comic disruption, but as a visual breach that tears open another possible reading of the encounter.

Character sheet showing Blue, a small blue felt creature, in multiple views and life stages including neutral form, dressed version, and elderly variations.
Blue — character study and variations across time.

The film was built through an AI-assisted workflow combining image generation, animation, editing, and sound design. The process moved between defined beats and visual discovery, allowing images to evolve and reshape the sequence as it developed.

Rather than aiming for a seamless or polished result, I focused on preserving texture, softness, and a sense of something slightly imperfect — closer to a crafted object than a synthetic image.

A Small Film About Shared Air

A man and woman facing each other on a crowded tram, holding tissues after a sneeze, sharing a quiet moment of recognition.
The moment of connection.

The structure follows a simple arc: discomfort, rupture, projection, return.

On the tram, two strangers barely register one another. In the imagined felt-world that follows, a whole lifetime appears: empathy, love, parenthood, and the quiet act of letting go. When the film snaps back to reality, nothing “dramatic” has happened — only a slight shift in distance, a softening, a new awareness of the other person in front of you.

That small change was the heart of the film for me.

Competition

Blue standing outside a soft felt house, looking into a pink crater in a stylized blue and pink landscape.

In Another Breath was awarded First Prize at the Curious Refuge Feel-Good AI Film Competition (2026).

The competition brought together a selection of AI-assisted short films exploring storytelling, emotion, and emerging creative workflows.

The film is featured alongside the other finalists on the competition page.

View the competition winners ➤