Hell

NOWNESS Experiments

18.08.2025

Enter the inferno as romance unfolds in an animated medieval world, built from handcrafted sculpture and filmed performance via virtual reality

Taking romance and passion to an apocalyptic landscape, director Tom Brett builds a sweeping love story in virtual reality for the short film HELL. When a volcano erupts in a medieval town, a nun leaves her life at the convent behind to find her love in the inferno, as past, present and future collide on a voyage to the mouth of the volcano.

Working with Unreal Engine, Brett transfers real-world elements and environments into 3D animation, assembled from handcrafted sculpture, paintings, live-action performance, and photogrammetric scans collected across France and Belgium. Demonstrating the deep emotional resonance of stories born from reality, against those drawn entirely from a virtual void, Brett reveals how unifying both worlds can amplify our sense of connection – translating objects, textures and characters from the world around us to an alternate realm.

“HELL demonstrates how much more we respond to stories constructed from the world around us. Like the protagonist decides, perhaps only things we can reach out and touch are worthy of our belief. I wanted to depict a heightened medieval world that captured the gothic nature of this romance. The end result is an artwork where the physicality of the animated environment feels as true as the performances within it.

Inspired by the experience of finding love in the shadow of loss, Brett explores the surreal mental landscape he saw rise from this clash of emotions – between euphoria, grief, and the intensity of yearning in the face of death. Carried by HELL’s silent protagonists and an original score by Julian Tran, Brett finds symbolism in the epic quest to reconnect before all is lost, risking life and eternity to find faith, not in the eternal, but in the here and now.

from nowness.com

written & directed by Tom Brett

produced by Maddie Woods

music by Julian Tran

starring Erin Alles & Hanne Peeraer

executive produced by Paul Weston

with thanks to Amanda Steward, Coco Sohiez, Dorian Tran