Ahead of the film’s HollyShorts Film Festival run, the filmmaker discusses building an algorithmic totalitarian world through restraint, using Thomas as a reflection of the system around him, the visual language behind The New State and the feature film now in development.

Henry K. Hwang’s CERTAIN THOMAS drops audiences into a dystopian America governed by an algorithmic totalitarian regime, but rather than explaining the mechanics of its world, the filmmaker allows the audience to piece together its rules through character, production design and visual detail.

Drawing on influences ranging from Ernest Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory to historical totalitarian regimes and contemporary technocratic culture, the film explores technological progress, societal conformity and the increasingly complicated relationship between humanity and algorithmic systems.

Hwang, who wrote and directed the short, is already developing the world of CERTAIN THOMAS into a feature with producer Scott Aharoni and Curious Gremlin. The feature will explore the darker implications of algorithmic supremacy, dataism and the bureaucratic systems that could emerge from unchecked technological progress.

We spoke with Hwang about creating a fully realised dystopian world without over-explaining it, deliberately resisting the visual spectacle often associated with science fiction, collaborating with his production team, expanding the world into a feature and his hopes of establishing a new genre he calls “dataism.”

CERTAIN THOMAS drops audiences into a fully realised dystopian world without spending much time explaining its rules. How did you approach world-building while trusting viewers to fill in the gaps?

My favourite writer is Ernest Hemingway, and I was always struck by how much I knew of his world even if I’d read only a few of his paragraphs. Then I realised the technique he was using was the Iceberg Theory; the idea that as long as a writer deeply understands the story, its characters and its world, revealing only a small, spare fraction of that on the page is enough for the reader to sense a lot of things beneath the surface.

And this was my approach when writing CERTAIN THOMAS. I made sure that I knew every single thing I had to know about this world. I mapped, planned and wrote down all the ideas, including how the system in this algorithmic totalitarian-regime America works in great detail.

After that, I trusted that the audience would follow along as I told this intimate story about Thomas and his dilemma. That is to say, I only focused on telling his story without consciously trying to give the audience any information about the world.

It’s how, if I’m not mistaken, Kazuo Ishiguro, Cormac McCarthy or Steinbeck approach their writing. I was surprised by how few revisions I had to do once I had my story written down, as the world-building was pretty much done by itself.

So, in essence, if the writer knows the world in its greatest detail, I think all the creative choices he makes, subconsciously and consciously, fit that world, and thus all the information people have to know will naturally permeate throughout.

“I wanted to make a sci-fi that embraces ‘less is more.’”

The film feels ambitious in scale despite being a short. Were there conversations early on about what absolutely had to remain on screen and what could simply be implied?

Luckily, not. My producer Scott Aharoni, apart from being such a great producer, is a great filmmaker himself, and he never tried to stop me from being fully creative and crazy with my ideas. So I felt total freedom when writing this, which is always fantastic.

But in the first place, I’ve wanted to make a sci-fi that embraces “less is more.” Also, because this world takes place in a setting that looks familiar to our present and the past, I needed brutalist buildings that fit that kind of timeless tone. Luckily, in New York City, there are quite a few interesting buildings I could find.

And in terms of the story, yes, this arc is definitely something that is ambitious, but also, in my opinion, it is not so large that it requires a feature length to do it justice.

It’s a very simple, symbolic story that, I think, fits well as a short form.

“The New State is personified through Thomas — they mirror each other perfectly.”

You wear both the writer and director hats on this project. At what stage did the film become less about its central concept and more about Thomas himself?

I have always found it a bit debatable when people try to separate matters of sociology and systems from matters of individuals. I think they’re inseparable. The societal system reflects the essence of human nature.

Capitalism, for instance, is the only societal system that has truly succeeded in the long term. It’s a system that’s most competitive, profit-driven and class-dividing. I think that says something honest about who we are, whether we like it or not.

So when I was building Thomas’s arc, I knew it had to reflect the core system of the algorithmic totalitarian world called The New State that he lives in.

By construct, then, Thomas’s story is a reflection of that system, and thus The New State is personified through Thomas. They mirror each other perfectly.

The New State forces people to replace old values for newer ones, and Thomas’ character journey reflects that: he has to make a difficult choice that is for progress, even though it is very dehumanising for him.

“I designed the world in a way that is quite recognisable as our world, while still feeling modern.”

Science fiction often leans on visual spectacle, but CERTAIN THOMAS builds tension through restraint. Was that always part of your creative approach, or did practical limitations ultimately shape the film’s aesthetic?

To me, that was definitely my creative approach, because I didn’t want CERTAIN THOMAS to feel like a distant future.

In fact, this is a reflection of what is happening now — how we are conforming to a new world of algorithmic supremacy. I think if we amaze the audience with great visual spectacle, then, by default, that would create a good distance from our reality and present.

So I designed the world in a way that is quite recognisable as our world, while still feeling modern, as the focus is not on the future but today.

This is an urgent story about what is happening currently.

“I think sci-fi is the new form of realism.”

The production design and cinematography create a world that feels both contemporary and timeless. How closely did you work with your department heads to establish the visual identity of the state before shooting began?

That’s very pleasing to hear, because that’s certainly what we were trying to go for.

One of the things the story is about is the banality of evil — how ordinary men help commit institutional or large-scale evil in society in the name of conformity, and their social psychology of wanting to fit in with the tribe and not fall behind.

This has been happening since the dawn of society. We have this strong desire in which we want to stay relevant, and we blindly tend to follow whatever has been accepted by the system.

To reflect this, the visual reference was drawn from the Soviet Union and other past totalitarian-regime visuals, along with contemporary, slick, minimalist, technocratic visuals.

I talked closely with our great production designers Martyna Kalata and Grace Musser to achieve that sense by making a harmonious combination of the two.

Martyna, who led the visual creation of the film’s visual language throughout, and I spent a lot of time working through how to blend Soviet-style propaganda within a technocracy sort of government, and how to marry the cold detachment of algorithms with religious imagery.

We had a lot of conversations and gathered a lot of historical references from past totalitarian or authoritarian regimes, and also the current tech world, to attain what we now see on the screen.

I think our art team did a phenomenal job. I couldn’t have asked for better collaborators.

“This CERTAIN THOMAS world, if you ask me, needs multiple films and series to do justice.”

You’re already developing CERTAIN THOMAS as a feature. Looking back at the short, were there ideas or characters you deliberately held back because you knew there was a larger story to tell?

There are a lot of ideas that could have been explored in terms of the mechanics of this algorithmic totalitarian regime, but of course, due to the limits of the length, we could not go too in depth.

Or rather, this particular story didn’t need to explore those detailed areas to get its point across. However, if you look carefully, they are all there in the background and the setting.

I think people who saw this film would question the algorithmic religious paintings shown in the white room, and also question the genesis of this new totalitarian regime.

All these will be further explored in the feature film that I am developing with Curious Gremlin. I have the whole history and this regime’s eventual fate mapped out, and this CERTAIN THOMAS world, if you ask me, needs multiple films and series to do justice. I hope I can make those happen sometime soon.

To talk a bit more about the feature film that I’m currently writing, the film takes place in the same world, but it has a different story — a story I think is far more disturbing and powerful, one that not only depicts the danger of the paradoxical nature of progress, algorithmic supremacy and dataism, but also the bureaucratic labyrinth these kinds of systems could create, which could be genuinely horrifying.

However, I would like to add that I am not against this technology. As a matter of fact, there is no way to stop this AI revolution, as it’s more of an Oppenheimer situation in that if America stops, then some other country would win.

Also, I know it could do wonderful things, like curing cancer or expanding our knowledge on biology and physics. However, I think we as a society must and should take precautions and great moral responsibility, as this technology is unbelievably powerful.

This short and the feature also serve as a demonstration of the path our humanity may go down if we blindly accept societal progress.

“Scott is the man.”

Scott Aharoni has become one of the most prolific producers working in short films. What did he bring creatively to the project beyond producing, particularly as someone who’s helping develop the feature adaptation?

Scott is the man. Not only is he an incredibly smart and creative artist and producer himself, but he’s also a great human being. That combination of creativity and business intelligence is so rare.

Also, I’ve never worked with a producer who has this great of a work ethic and is able to juggle many projects at once without sacrificing quality and, maybe most impressive of all, respond to my texts quicker than anyone I know.

He really cared about this project, and he has helped me through a lot of things that I know I could not have done without him.

Not only that, but he has done some seriously great work. He is a producer of the IT FOLLOWS sequel, THEY FOLLOW, and he and his company, Curious Gremlin, have been involved in so many exciting feature projects, like THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE starring Amanda Seyfried, Kristen Stewart’s THE CHRONOLOGY OF WATER, ALPHA GANG starring Cate Blanchett, NEON’s THE WRONG GIRLS, and so much more.

I have great faith in him as a producer and a friend for our feature film, and I hope we remain lifelong collaborators.

“I hope a new sci-fi genre gets created: dataism.”

Shorts often become calling cards as much as standalone films. What conversations are you hoping CERTAIN THOMAS opens within the industry as you continue building your career as a filmmaker?

I would love for my short film to, in some way, help make science fiction cinema be taken more seriously.

So much of what we once dismissed as pure speculation in this genre has become reality. I think sci-fi is the new form of realism, just like CERTAIN THOMAS is really a depiction of what’s happening now with technological progress and societal conformity.

If you want me to be more ambitious, I hope a new sci-fi genre gets created: dataism.

CERTAIN THOMAS is a dataist thriller, to be precise. I’m convinced dataism is the most urgent topic of our time; our future won’t just be shaped by data, it will be governed by it.

“Our future won’t just be shaped by data, it will be governed by it.”