Year after year, former NexT competitors become the voices of tomorrow's cinema, once they transition to feature film. Supporting as usual this new generation of filmmakers, the NexT Generation program presents the debut films made by former winners of NexT awards.
The film closing the festival, The Human Surge, is the debut feature film of Eduardo Williams, winner of the "Andrei Toncu" award for the best sound-design at the 2012 edition of NexT, with the short film The Sound of the Stars Dazes Me. A triptych style meditation on work and leisure in the digital age, The Human Surge won The Golden Leopard award in the Cineasti del presente section of the Locarno International Film Festival.
The film follows three young men from Argentina, Mozambique and The Philippines caught between meaningless jobs they wish to leave behind, but lacking any other goals or outlooks. Their sole connection is their online presence, clashing with an almost mystical desire to escape towards landscapes of a bucolic, primordial beauty: virgin beaches, forests and fields that seem illuminated by an inner glow.