«The Eyeire» by Jiacheng Wang

In her evocative short film The Eyeire, director and lead performer Jiacheng Wang explores a chillingly “progressive” dystopia where the pursuit of enlightenment has been weaponised into a form of social control. In this world, a radicalised interpretation of Buddhist philosophy dictates that the path to Nirvana requires the total eradication of emotion, viewed by the state as inherently damaging and regressive.

The narrative follows Synesthesia, a protagonist burdened by her role as the society’s sole empath. Possessing hyper-human senses in a culture that mandates emotional numbness, she finds herself profoundly isolated after suffering a sexual assault. Rather than receiving justice or empathy, she is met with the cold indifference of a system that views her trauma as a mere attachment to be suppressed. Her journey becomes a revolutionary act of reclaiming the “gaze”—an attempt to find a cure not just for her pain, but for the systematic repression of the human spirit.

Visually, the film is a triumph of atmospheric storytelling. The cinematography by Eva Wu is exceptionally curated, capturing the sterile, disciplined beauty of this “Eyeire” with a precision that makes the protagonist’s internal sensory overload feel even more visceral. Every frame serves to highlight the tension between the pristine, emotionless world and the raw, prohibited desires of the individual.

It is this sophisticated blend of philosophical inquiry and visual artistry that led The Eyeire to be named Best Experimental Film at the Rome Prisma Film Awards this past October. Wang has crafted a compassionate yet haunting reflection on generational violence and the collective unconscious, questioning whether a world without suffering is worth inhabiting if it also requires a world without feeling.