June 30, 2021 |
Back in December, Demna Gvasalia unleashed Afterworld: The Age of Tomorrow, a video game created with the makers of Fortnight which catipulted Balenciaga’s Fall 21 collection into a dystopian world. In lieu of physical catwalk shows, the designer imagined a fantastical narrative, in which users could venture through an alternative universe set in the year 2031.
With the collection hitting global stores this week, Balenciaga presents Afterworld’s second coming: a mini-movie of epic proportions. Like the video game, a series of real models and actors were digitally rendered into virtual characters. In the film, we follow two protagonists who meet at a “fictional facility providing temporary escapes to virtual scenarios”. They are amongst a giant group of other characters, all dressed in black, each awaiting their turn to put on a VR headset to temporarily escape to a virtual, controlled expereince. Though once their headsets are popped on, the outlandish scenarios their minds are taken to cannot distract the protagonists from thinking about each other.
When they are eventually brought back to the “real” world, the pair find each other and are joined in a warm embrace, where their bodies begin to glitch into a plethora of different characters. If reading that all has given you a sore head, that’s the intention. Nothing’s certain in the Afterworld.
Directed by Quantic Dream.
