As governments increasingly seek to regulate, categorise and define the most intimate aspects of our identities, Mar Sudac’s (Zero, Infinity) feels less like a work of speculative fiction and more like an unsettling glimpse into a possible near future. Following married couple Gus and Clark as they are forced to undergo an invasive government procedure designed to verify their sexuality, the short blends science fiction, political satire and intimate relationship drama to explore surveillance, state power and the impossibility of neatly defining human identity. Written and directed by Sudac and shot on striking 16mm by Kayla Hoff, the film has already made a significant impact on the festival circuit, winning the Lawrence Kasdan Best Narrative Film Award at the Ann Arbor Film Festival and qualifying for the 2027 Academy Awards. Ahead of its Official Selection screening at the 2026 HollyShorts Film Festival, we spoke with Sudac and producer Sayali Upadhye about the film’s increasingly prescient themes, the influence of contemporary politics, the decision to shoot on film, and why, in a world increasingly defined by division, choosing love can be its own quiet act of rebellion.
The film centres on the idea of having to prove an aspect of your identity to the state and then having that identity formally recorded on an official document. It made me think about the current climate in the US, particularly the changes around sex markers and passports. Has what is happening in America changed the way you think about the film, or did it inspire the film at all?
Mar: I mean, out the gate, you totally understand where the film is coming from, clearly. I think that’s what this film was a response to. We had been talking at the beginning of this process about the difficulty with getting a visa. It was that month where we were really developing the ideas for this film. It was January 2025 when the policy you’re mentioning was reinstated.
We shot in two days in June, and I remember specifically that the first day we shot was the day of, I think, the largest No Kings protest in Los Angeles that had happened to date. That was obviously a response to the ICE raids. Then I think it was either in October or November of last year when the policy requiring the sex assigned at birth on passports was upheld by the courts.
In a way, there’s been a bit of continuity there in the scaffolding of our project. For me, at least, it’s been a constant renewal of the urgency and importance of this sort of film.
Sayali: I just wanted to add that it’s a very funny thing because when we made the film, it was clearly something that we had noticed happening in the world and wanted to put onto pages and make a story that we thought was science fiction.
In the last year, things have developed so much in the world, everywhere on this planet, that we kind of like to say the film was just slightly ahead of its time, but not really, because now we can see those things becoming a reality in the very near future.
I guess we just picked up on the things that were affecting us and the people near us as well.
It’s so scary to think that you’ve made a dystopian film, but it’s becoming so much like reality now. I’m curious, have many people picked up on what I mentioned about having your sex at birth on a passport? Have people made that link as well?
Sayali: Actually, it’s so funny that you mentioned that because we just had our Salute Your Shorts LA screening this Saturday, and we were asked this question as well. The moderator was so kind to point out that connection.
Mar: There is something lovely in the sense that some of the emotions we’re getting at are fairly universal and a lot of people can connect to those feelings. But I think that being such a specific cornerstone for us, I don’t know if anyone has quite gotten to the punch as quickly. So definitely a special shout-out to you.
Did you take any inspiration from other films or filmmakers when it came to the story or the overall look of the film?
Mar: Absolutely. Over time, I’ve grown a little more forensic and really specific with the inspirations in terms of what has worked, especially when it’s a bit of a weird world or has elevated logic. What has worked previously? What precedents are out there that allow us to rely on there being some history of this being understood or intelligible, so that we can confidently make such an out-there film?
We were really specifically looking to create a world that felt as real as possible, as opposed to something that felt too overtly futuristic. Less Black Mirror and more filmmakers who have worked in a very fairy-tale kind of space.
At the beginning, I was looking at documentary filmmakers like Barbara Kopple or Frederick Wiseman, and then moving more into narrative. Andrea Arnold is a constant North Star for me.
Then I stumbled upon a film called Plan 75 by filmmaker Chie Hayakawa, which was a different language from Andrea Arnold, who is constantly on the move. Hayakawa was creating a not-so-distant-future parable using a more removed or static camera language.
Then, for me, I made this link with the Austrian filmmaker Ulrich Seidl, who also has a sort of fairy-tale quality to his work. All of these inspirations became this melting pot that helped create the way we could tell the truth, or simulate this feeling of actuality, as much as possible.
“Choosing who to love or choosing love over hate, as clichéd and sappy as it sounds, is what we really need in the world right now.”
Mar, you’ve described the film as a “rebellious clapback to contemporary realities”. I suppose we’ve already discussed it a little, but were there any particular events or developments in America that found their way into the film?
Mar: Absolutely. The first thing that comes to mind is the Real ID requirement. It’s a bit of an elevated driver’s licence that is now required on flights, and it felt like the first step towards more information being turned over from the individual to the government in order to move freely through space.
There is also certainly a little bit of commentary on hospital overcrowding, which is an issue in the American medical system.
The choice of “rebellious clapback” is almost a tonal one for me, too. The film, while trying to convey this sense of reality, is also a bit of a satire. We wanted to lampoon or parody the sense of normalcy or everydayness that comes with being so used to an intrusive process, where the abnormal becomes normal.
There are moments throughout the film where someone is bringing in an iced coffee or watching this fairly intense process and being quite blasé about it. I think that was a little bit of a nudge in that direction.
I’m intrigued by this driving licence thing. How does that work? Is it on top of a passport, or what’s the purpose of it?
Mar: it’s basically an enhanced driver’s licence.
It was presented in such a strange way. It was communicated as something that was needed by the TSA, which regulates security at airports. It’s just an enhanced driver’s licence, but the rollout was so strange. There was never a really clear explanation as to why this ID enhancement was needed. It was just something that needed to be done if you wanted to fly on a plane.
There was a certain propaganda element about it. You saw this woman who was essentially the face of Real ID appearing on all of these monitors. There were deadlines and messages saying you needed to get this ID if you wanted to fly.
It was creating a real stress or frenzy to get this ID, and for me, it felt like almost a flex of power to regulate the movement of people through space. I found that quite unnerving.
Sayali: It was advertised with a sense of urgency and made it look like if you didn’t get a Real ID, you wouldn’t be able to fly.
The current reality is that you need a Real ID or you have to show your passport, so essentially a federal government document. Before Real ID, you could show your driver’s licence at airports and fly domestically, but now that has been replaced by the ID or passport.
That’s also one thing that we brought into our film: the sense of urgency, the constant reminder of the deadline that you need to do this by this date.
I think the film is based in the US and has very American commentary, but personally I think it’s very universal. It also touches on parts of the world where very similar bills or government policies have been passed. We were just trying to be a reflection of the world.
“We wanted to make a story that we thought was science fiction. In the last year, things have developed so much in the world that now we can see those things becoming a reality in the very near future.”
In the film itself, there’s this really interesting contrast between the coldness of the government system and the warm intimacy between Gus and Clark. How did you approach creating this visually, particularly through the 16mm cinematography?
Mar: It’s so great that you picked up on that. I think, almost in a way, that is the arc of the film.
We’re introduced to this world in a very cold, removed way. The shots are a bit wider, and then the closest we get is almost at the very end of the film, which is absolutely the most warm and intimate.
The 16mm serves the tone for both of those ideas quite well. When we were trying to create this sense of actuality, or make the world feel very real despite it being a bit out there or elevated, we arrived at this idea of long takes where you’re almost just in the image. It’s like, “Well, this is really happening. This is happening live.”
For me, that was something that would be absolutely bolstered by the use of film. Film is such a fragile, slightly dangerous medium. It’s quite technical and you have to be very careful with it. There’s this sense of, “Oh, whoa, this has really been captured in this way.”
Its imperfections also lend themselves really well to what we were trying to do. The film, even in its title, is trying to get out of a very binary understanding of the human being. Film is the way the light hits the crystals, and it’s going to be imperfect. It’s going to have flicker and imperfections in the image.
Then, when we’re a little bit closer, it works really well with the concept of the film itself.
Sayali: I just wanted to add a little bit about the film aspect. Film is so organic. No two frames of film shot on film are similar.
Because we were showing such a technical world, especially the cold clinic scenes, we wanted to breathe in a little bit of the humanity that we were showing because, at the end of the day, we were still looking at humans being under a microscope.
Once we came to the decision to shoot on film, the digital version of the film just didn’t make sense to us because that was a very cold world that we didn’t want to show. The film was ultimately about love and hope.
You mentioned the title there, Mar. Where did the title come from?
Mar: Zero, Infinity is a bit of a reference to this philosophical idea called Zeno’s paradox. You can make an argument using the rules of maths that you could never reach a true zero or a true sense of infinity. It’s a paradoxical line of thinking, but it’s also very interesting to think about conceptually.
The film is, of course, exploring this idea of a binary understanding of attraction, or trying to quantify people in that way.
If we use this other mathematical concept of trying to put a coordinate on a graph, you have your bracket points as zero and infinity. If those are, philosophically speaking, arguably unattainable, I think it creates a sense of being unbound, or of infinite possibility.
I think that’s sort of the heart of the film.
Your actors, Brandon Wilson and Cheech Manohar, bring so much vulnerability to their relationship. What did they each bring to Gus and Clark that perhaps you didn’t expect when it was first written?
Mar: If I absolutely had it my way, especially with actors, I would work with them in a very specific way. I work a lot with non-actors, and with non-actors, for me, it’s about finding the natural essence of a person and cultivating that. It’s about preserving that.
With actors, I do something similar, but I also sometimes imagine how wonderful it would be to rehearse like a play, to figure out a lot to work with. We can do that rehearsal with a professional actor and still preserve a sense of the organic or natural essence.
This was really a very fast process. I met with Cheech and Brandon once for coffee in a neighbourhood in Los Angeles, and then we were shooting that weekend.
The vulnerability, softness and gentleness were things I don’t think I could have directed. They were happening, and they didn’t need to be augmented in any way. They just needed to be supported.
What reactions or takeaways are you hoping people takeaway from the film?
Mar: Honestly, for me, it’s a reaction like yours where you’re like, “This is what’s going on here.”
I was just talking with someone at Salute Your Shorts, the film festival after HollyShorts this weekend, who said there is a similar practice to what’s going on in the film that currently exists in the Turkish military.
He was saying that, and I haven’t fact-checked this, so I hope I’m not spreading something that isn’t accurate. But I think reactions like that are what resonate most.
I think this film is a bit of a collectivist project. It’s a bit of, “We’re all seeing this, right? We’re all feeling this.”
Then the conversation that comes out of that means the film comes off the screen and turns into something that’s maybe a little more material. For me, that’s the ideal reaction.
Sayali: For me, the reactions have been very similar. People are comparing what’s going on in the world.
I’m from India, so I’ve had friends from India who watched the film and connected it with the trans bill that was just passed, which kind of strips away the self-identity process. Basically, the law removes the right to self-identify one’s gender, and you need a medical board to review and recommend identity certificates before it can actually be recognised.
I think this is something so related to the film, and it has just been in conversations over the last two or three months. So I think it’s these kinds of connections that are happening.
But I personally am a fiercely optimistic person, and I try to take the positive out of everything.
I hope the reaction to the film is also taking the message that love can be quite radical. Doing a quiet rebellion, choosing who to love or choosing love over hate, as clichéd and sappy as it sounds, is what we really need in the world right now.
I hope people take away those minute acts of defiance: reaching out to your friends, reaching out to a stranger, doing an act of kindness for a random stranger. I think that is how we are going to spread the love in this world where hate is so easy to spread right now.
We have been divided based on our identities, nationalities, gender, sexuality, everything. So I hope people take the hope and love out of the film. That would be the best reaction for me.
“Love can be quite radical.”
This is a very ambitious concept for a film. What were the biggest challenges involved in creating it, particularly the practical realities of making a short film?
Sayali: There were two or three aspects to this.
The biggest challenge for us was fitting the whole schedule together. When we got the script, it had multiple locations. There’s an unspoken rule that if you want to make a short film, you should have one or two locations.
We just loved the script so much and developed it with Mar. Even though we tried to have limited locations, we knew it wouldn’t be the film without these different settings.
Finding locations was one challenge. We were lucky because we location-scouted a couple of places, and the second place we saw was a sound stage, like a recording studio, that used to be a recording studio in the ’70s. They were converting it into a kind of film studio for locations and things.
We were incredibly lucky to find this place because it had different rooms and different spaces that we could shoot in. They were so nice about letting us put up the wooden panels and turn one of the recording studios into the medical room we see in the film.
So that was one part of it: finding all these locations and getting everyone into one location.
The second thing was scheduling. Because we decided to shoot on film, we had to let go of the third day of shooting. We couldn’t afford another day of crew, cast and location costs.
So we took on this challenge of trying to shoot everything in two days, which also presented Mar and Kayla with the challenge of being very precise and decisive with their shot selection and everything.
It was a creative challenge that I think we weren’t necessarily happy about having, but ultimately we were happy that we had it because it worked out for the best.
The third thing I would say was the implied nudity and sexual relations on screen. We had to work with an intimacy coordinator.
Our wonderful coordinator, Morgan Smith, was there with us on set on all days throughout the shoot. She worked so well. We had a meeting before the film where she asked us questions and asked Mar and Kayla about how they were planning to shoot certain moments.
We just had to be really respectful of the actors, and we had a wonderful crew who were also very respectful.
Unfortunately, we don’t have any behind-the-scenes footage because there weren’t any cameras allowed. We had to be super respectful before and after shooting those scenes.
As a producer, this was my first time working with an intimacy coordinator, and it was a very enriching experience, learning about their process as well. I think every set should have one if you have intimate scenes.
It wasn’t necessarily a challenge, but it was definitely a learning curve for us.
Mar: Each of these challenges actually became a boon for us in a way. I think they all improved the film.
Talking about Morgan, there were moments on set where I simply could not achieve something. I didn’t have the language to communicate it, and she did. I’m so grateful for that.
Or, with us having this collapsed shooting schedule, I think it improved the shots. There was a moment in a hallway where I had this idea for some crazy tracking shot that was going to be impossible. Instead, we collapsed it down to this one moment at the end of the hallway where they’re coming down, and it’s one of my favourite moments of the film now.
So we took the circumstances and, I guess, now have a little bit of gratitude for them.
Sayali: I also just want to add that because we were limited with the crew we could have on set, we were only allowed around 25 people at one time.
Now we laugh at it because we had fun, but it was really funny because literally every person was in the movie. You can see us walking in the background. The whole shot that Mar described, which is one of my favourite shots as well, has my co-producer Bobby literally in scrubs and cleaning.
It was just literally all hands on deck. We were wearing different hats, as you have to do on an independent film, but even more so on a short film.
My co-producer Trey had helped the production team put up the wooden panels and cut up the production design stuff in the days before. It was just about doing anything we could and being very creative with the limited resources we had.
Ultimately, (Zero, Infinity) is less interested in predicting the future than in holding a mirror up to the present. What begins as a story about bureaucracy, surveillance and the policing of identity gradually becomes something far more intimate: a film about the human need to connect, love and exist beyond the categories imposed upon us. As Sudac and Upadhye’s hopes for the film make clear, its most radical act is not necessarily resistance on a grand scale, but the small, everyday choices through which people continue to care for one another. In a world where hatred and division can spread with frightening ease, offers a quietly hopeful reminder that love, connection and even joy can become powerful forms of defiance.
