Lab Rat Wins Audience Choice Award at the Bull City International Film Festival

Congratulations to the MA Acting for Screen team behind the 2018 short film Lab Rat, which has won an Audience Choice Award at the Bull City International Film Festival. 

Now in its third year, the Bull City International Film Festival is hosted in Durham, North Carolina and showcases short films from all over the globe.  It is open internationally to all filmmakers and screenwriters who understand that film is much more than expensive equipment and sets with impractical budgets.  The festival seeks films and scripts with character driven plots; insightful stories relying on human expression more than special effects. 

Lab Rat is a short film by Central’s MA Acting for Screen students produced by Neil Chordia and Course Leader Amanda Brennan and directed by Nour Wazzi.   

In a near-future world where human workers are being replaced by robots and there have been revolutionary breakthroughs in neuromorphic computing,’Lab Rat’ is a story that asks what it would mean if we could design and manufacture love.  Playing as a twist on the Turing Test, this is a claustrophobic thriller where no one can be sure what is real and what is artificial. 

The film has been showcased at numerous festivals on the independent film circuit and has won accolades including, most recently, Best Production Design at the Short to the Point International Short Film Festival. 

Lab Rat | United Kingdom | 2018 | 16’    

Production Designer: Isabella Bruno 

Director: Nour Wazzi        

Writer: Matt Brothers 

Producers: Neil Chordia, Amanda Brennan 

Cast: Matt Harris, Kirsty Sturgess, Abeo Jackson, Max Williams, Sian Hill 

Synopsis: In the near future, a group of scientists trapped in a lab learns that one of them is an A.I….. and it has been deceiving them.