World Premiere
Fifteen years after the fall of civilization, the last remnants of humanity are left to survive in a world without electricity. When a solar-powered generator opens up new frontiers for discovery, our narrator starts recording his memories using an old phone, and a group of artists — a musician, a storyteller, and a dancer — utilize the electricity to bring their creative impulses to life. Suddenly, members of a generation shaped by the apocalypse are able to scavenge through old smartphones like relics of a vanished civilization, discovering pictures of cats and fragments of forgotten music from a world they never knew.
Harry Cepka’s Gasmask is a humorous meditation on memory, ritual, and art in the aftermath of the apocalypse, captured in stark black and white photography that recalls Chris Marker’s La Jetée. Both enigmatic and surprisingly moving, Gasmask explores what remains of culture following technological collapse, imagining what cinema might look like after cinema itself has gone extinct.
Gasmask will be preceded by the short film, Twin Snakes by Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn. In Twin Snakes, time wriggles through two timelines as two sets of protagonists search for meaning and answers in an anachronistic sea of signifiers.
Supported by
Media Partner
Grace Glowicki, Casey MQ, Ken Castaneda, Akosua T. Adasi, Thuto Durkac-Somo, Rosa Gilmore
Canada/USA
2026
English
Indigenous & Community Access
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Credits & Director
Producer
Harry Cepka, Inés Gowland
Cinematography
Inés Gowland
Editor
Harry Cepka
Original Music
Casey MQ
Harry Cepka
Harry Cepka is a Vancouver-born, New York-based director and editor. His first feature film, Raf, premiered at TIFF in 2019 and went on to win numerous awards in North American and European festivals. His short films have played at VIFF and DOXA, and he was selected for TIFF’s 2021 Director’s Lab and the 2023 TIFF Writers’ Studio. As an editor, Cepka’s work has played at Sundance, Rotterdam, TIFF, SXSW, Tribeca, and more.
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