A trilogy about the effects of war on children
A Crack of Light is conceived as a three-part feature composed of three half-hour short films set in Ukraine, Hiroshima, and Gaza. Each story explores how war shapes the inner lives of children—not as a political statement, but as a human and emotional journey.
The three settings are deeply personal to me. As a child, I traveled extensively with my parents around the world, filming what I saw on Super-8. One of the most profound experiences of my youth was visiting Hiroshima, which left an indelible impression on me and continues to inform my work. My connection to Ukraine is equally personal: my father was Ukrainian, and the history of that region has always been part of my family’s story. And my connection to Gaza and the Middle East comes from living in Cairo as a child and traveling widely through the region.
These three places—different in history, culture, and time—are united by one theme: the experience of children living in the shadow of war.
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The Three Stories
Hiroshima
This segment follows an attractive teenage Japanese girl who is facially disfigured and blinded by the atomic bomb, and looses partially her eye sight. Her relationship with her fiancee, gets tested, but ultimately love wins the way. Because much of the intimate historical imagery of such a personal story does not exist, the film experiments with creating AI-generated historical footage, blending imagined memories with documentary-like realism. The project also serves as an exploration of visual and narrative techniques I hope to develop further in a future feature film inspired by a Japanese stage play.
Ukraine
The Ukraine story centers on a young self-documenting, social media obsessed champion-gamer, who runs away and becomes a drone pilot. Seen mostly through digital devices, displays, phone and screens, it examines the psychological and emotional consequences of remote warfare, and how technology reshapes both distance and responsibility in modern conflict. Her moral crisis leads to the choice to become a robotic ambulance operator, saving lives on the drone infested front, regardless if even they are the enemy.
Gaza
The Gaza segment, currently completed as a 12-minute short film, being expanded to 30 minutes, tells the story of a young girl trapped beneath the rubble of a bombed building as rescuers attempt to reach her, as she experiences hallucinatory memories of her life before the war. Ultimately she realizes we are all interconnected, and we are all love. This piece was created using 100% AI-generated imagery combined with human voices, as an experiment in achieving photorealism and emotional authenticity through emerging tools.
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Artistic Approach
A Crack of Light is also an exploration of cinematic language in the age of AI. My goal is not to replace human actors or traditional filmmaking, but to explore what becomes possible when certain barriers—historical reconstruction, inaccessible locations, or large-scale production costs—can be overcome through new methods, and explorations of a new cinema language.
In this project, I am experimenting with:
• Photorealistic AI-generated characters and environments
• The creation of historical footage that never existed
• Hybrid storytelling that preserves human performance through voice and emotional truth
The intention is always the same: to reach the viewer emotionally and spiritually, and to use technology in service of storytelling rather than spectacle.
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A Film About Light
Ultimately, A Crack of Light is an anti-war film.
It is about children, memory, survival, and the fragile spark of hope that persists even in the darkest moments.
