Andrea Gatopoulos' Red Dead Online Short Is Now Streaming

Nouvelle Bug, the film residency founded by Andrea Gatopoulos, has put Gatopoulos' short Happy New Year, Jim on its Nouvelle Bug Cinémathèque YouTube channel, it announced in a reel on Oct. 2. The nine-minute film premiered at the 2022 Directors' Fortnight in Cannes and is also on Vimeo. Watch an excerpt below.

The film is shot inside Red Dead Online. Two players credited by their usernames, J1M (Jim Muzungu) and M0rt3n (Morten Hakke), spend New Year's Eve playing "like every day," according to the Directors' Fortnight listing. Tonight, Morten is uncomfortable. The pair are heard in voice-over against the game's Western landscape at dusk and after dark, talking about the game and about their own lives.

In a program note for the Encounters Film Festival in Bristol, critic Lillian Crawford wrote that "the fabric of the film itself becomes a computer game." The same note says Gatopoulos spent much of their time as a pro gamer until the age of 18, and that the film's reflection on gaming life and real life comes from that experience.

Gatopoulos wrote, shot and edited the film, which was produced by Il Varco with sound by Tommaso Barbaro. Its Vimeo page lists screenings at more than 20 festivals, including Curtas Vila do Conde, Sarajevo, Fantastic Fest and Film Fest Gent. Gatopoulos is also the lead tutor at Nouvelle Bug.

For more reading, see Kara Güt staged a two-person play inside Red Dead Online at a Dutch film festival, A free Los Angeles screening was a history of machinima and Happy New Year, Jim on Vimeo.