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OBEX film image; man looking down at something while someone stands next to him with a TV for a head

OBEX

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It’s 1987: Conor (Albert Birney) lives with his dog Sandy and spends his time manually transcribing other people’s photos into ASCII art and mailing them back on perforated printer paper. He comes across an ad in Personal Computing magazine for a game called OBEX — an immersive RPG adventure that requires him to mail in a videotape of himself. When the floppy disc arrives, he’s disappointed to see the game was a scam, but when his PC starts printing frightening messages, cicadas invade his home, and his dog goes missing, the real game begins.

Adventurers, stay a while and listen. Albert Birney crafts this uncanny analog horror turned gamer fantasy in his distinct vaporwave style – glitchy pixelated visuals, 8-bit nostalgia rendered in black-and-white, and scored with glowing 80s synth by Josh Dibb (aka Deakin of Animal Collective). OBEX is a lo-fi adventure into a mystical world built on a DOS-based framework, western RPG ruleset, and a fantasy mythology rich with lore.

 

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Director
Cast

Albert Birney, Callie Hernandez, Frank Mosley

Credits
Country of Origin

USA

Year

2025

Language

English

Film Contact
18+
90 min
Action & Suspense Comedy Horror & Sci-Fi
True Friend

Book Tickets

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Credits & Director

Producer

James Belfor, Albert Birney, Emma Hannaway, Pete Ohs

Screenwriter

Albert Birney, Pete Ohs

Cinematography

Pete Ohs

Editor

Albert Birney, Pete Ohs

Original Music

Josh Dibb

Albert Birney headshot

Albert Birney

Albert Birney is a Baltimore-based filmmaker. He has directed six feature films including The Beast Pageant (co-directed with Jon Moses), Sylvio and Strawberry Mansion (both co-directed with Kentucker Audley), Tux and Fanny, Eyeballs in the Darkness, and OBEX. Sylvio was named one of the 10 best films of 2017 by The New Yorker. Birney’s films have premiered at Sundance, SXSW, the Maryland Film Festival, Slamdance, and the Ottawa International Animation Festival. In 2021, he released a Tux and Fanny video game that he made with Gabriel Koenig.

Filmography: The Beast Pageant (2010); Sylvio (2017); Tux and Fanny (2019); Strawberry Mansion (2021); Eyeballs in the Darkness (2022)

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