Cine Circle Releases New Sci-Fi Anthology “TIMEFALL”
Cine Circle is expanding its catalogue of independent feature-length anthologies with TIMEFALL, a new science-fiction collection exploring what happens when humanity gains the power to travel through, manipulate and reconnect with time.
Bringing together The Chrononaut, Jettison, Time Setters and Afterlight, the anthology approaches time from four very different directions. A former Marine becomes one of humanity’s first travellers into the past, a soldier discovers the devastating personal cost of relativistic space travel, a group of vigilantes attempts to intervene in historic racial violence, and a woman brought back from death finds herself connected to the memories of someone who lived before her.
Across the four stories, time is more than a setting or science-fiction device. It separates families, creates opportunities to rewrite history, preserves memories and forces characters to confront the consequences of altering something humanity has previously been powerless to control.
THE CHRONONAUT
Written and directed by Jordan Riggs, The Chrononaut takes place in a near future where a government-funded scientific programme called Chronos has unlocked the secret of time travel.
At the centre of the story is Gary Freeman, a former Marine chosen to undertake an extraordinary assignment: travelling into the past. With a child on the way and the world watching, Gary enters the programme knowing that decisions made during the mission could alter humanity’s future in ways nobody can fully predict. The film stars Khalil Kain as Gary, alongside Taylor Brightman as Constance, with a cast that also includes Zolee Griggs, Iman Artwell-Freeman, Rachel Johanson and David Garelik.
The American short runs just over 13 minutes and blends science fiction with action, drama, technology and political themes. Its production was supported through a Seed&Spark crowdfunding campaign that raised more than $10,000 towards bringing Riggs’ vision of government-controlled time travel to the screen.
Rather than focusing solely on the mechanics of travelling through time, The Chrononaut places responsibility at the centre of its premise. Gary may have been selected because of his background and abilities, but entering the past also means carrying the potential consequences of every choice he makes there.
JETTISON
Written, directed and edited by JJ Pollack, Jettison explores time on a much larger scale, using interstellar travel to examine the human cost of leaving home behind.
Madison Wilson stars as Rebka, a restless young woman who joins the military for an opportunity to leave Earth and see the stars. But the interstellar conflict she enters comes with an unexpected consequence. The extreme speeds involved in space travel mean that time passes differently for Rebka and the people she has left on Earth, gradually separating her from the life she once knew.
Pollack has described the project as a “war movie without the war”, deliberately focusing less on combat than on the alienation and isolation experienced by those sent away to fight. Drawing inspiration from military stories as well as science-fiction treatments of relativistic time, the film uses time dilation to turn a familiar experience of deployment and separation into something far more extreme.
Produced by Cassie Wineland and Carrie Cates, with cinematography by Garson Ormiston, the 11-minute film developed from a script that received the Other Worlds Film Festival’s O’Bannon Grant. Jettison went on to screen at the Austin Film Festival and HollyShorts, as well as FilmQuest and the Boston Science Fiction Film Festival. It later won Best Science Fiction Short Film at the Nevermore Film Festival.
Within TIMEFALL, Jettison presents one of the anthology’s most personal uses of time. Nothing needs to malfunction and nobody needs to rewrite history: simply moving through the universe is enough to make the people and places Rebka loves disappear into the past.
TIME SETTERS
Writer-director Oliver Mack Calhoun takes the concept of changing the past in a very different direction with Time Setters, combining science fiction, action and historical drama.
The film follows a covert group of time-travelling vigilantes who use their ability to move through history to attempt to save people whose lives were taken by racial violence. Their mission takes them to Mississippi in 1955, where they attempt to prevent the murder of Emmett Till.
The team is led by Fury, a grieving inventor played by Candace Nicholas-Lippman, and Vengeance, a hardened former Marine played by Newton Mayenge. Larvell Hood plays Marvin, an idealistic newcomer drawn into the organisation and sent on his first mission. The cast also includes Steven Williams as Moses Wright, Isai Devine as Emmett Till, Sean Patrick Small and Trent Culkin.
Where many time-travel stories revolve around preventing hypothetical catastrophes, Time Setters deliberately connects its speculative premise to real history. The ability to travel into the past presents the characters with an opportunity that has existed only as a question: if you could intervene in an injustice that has already happened, would you — and what would changing it mean for everything that follows?
The film won Best Sci-Fi Short at the Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival and has continued to screen through programmes including the Pan African Film Festival presentation in Texas.
By combining the wish to change history with the unpredictability of time travel itself, Time Setters gives TIMEFALL its most direct confrontation with the idea that the past may not be as fixed as it appears.
AFTERLIGHT
While the other films send their characters physically through time or allow time to move differently around them, Afterlight explores the possibility that the past might instead travel into us.
Written and directed by Dion Watkins, the 17-minute science-fiction short follows Asaria Kade, played by Ninja Devoe, after a tragic car accident. Experimental technology successfully brings Asaria back to life, but the process fuses her mind with the thoughts and feelings of a woman from the past. What begins as a technological resurrection develops into something far more unsettling as another life begins intruding into her own.
Devoe leads a cast including Justin Ruff as Nateo Ellis and Dionne Gipson as Camila Robinson, alongside Cindy Dolenc, Sherita Starks, Shaun Duke Jr., Gabe Fonseca, Morgan Benoit and Brandy Lamkin. The film was produced through Cinestella, Ximen Media Group and Pretty Nifty Productions.
Watkins has described the wider ideas behind Afterlight as involving memory, humanity’s tendency to hold onto the past and the ethical implications of technologies capable of interfering with those deeply personal experiences. The short introduces a larger original story and has developed an international festival run since its completion.
The film has received Best Sci-Fi and thriller recognition at festivals and awards programmes in multiple countries, including wins connected to the New York Shorts Awards, London Women Film Festival, Berlin Short Film Awards and Kyoto Cinematica Film Festival.
In Afterlight, the past is no longer somewhere a machine can simply transport a person. It has become something that can survive inside another human being, turning memory itself into a form of time travel.
When Time Changes, Everything Changes
Each story in TIMEFALL begins with humanity gaining access to something that has always remained beyond its control.
The Chrononaut asks what responsibility comes with physically entering the past. Jettison explores the lives left behind when time moves differently across space. Time Setters imagines using time travel to confront injustices that history has already recorded. Afterlight turns memory into a bridge between two lives separated by time.
Together, the four films move beyond the mechanics of time machines and futuristic technology to explore what manipulating time would actually mean for the people caught inside it. The past can be visited, escaped, rewritten or carried forward — but none of these stories suggests that doing so comes without consequences.
TIMEFALL joins Cine Circle's growing catalogue of independent feature-length anthologies, bringing together short filmmakers and their work into a single curated release for wider digital distribution.
About Cine Circle
Cine Circle supports independent filmmakers through events, education, funding opportunities and film distribution. Alongside its filmmaker community and industry events, Cine Circle works with short filmmakers to bring their work to wider audiences through curated feature-length anthology releases and digital distribution.
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