Check Out This Trailer For Epic Sci-Fi Short The Shaman

By Brent McKnight | Updated

This article is more than 2 years old

Short films can be a hit and miss proposition, but director Marco Kalantari definitely has our attention with his epic sci-fi offering The Shaman. Watching this new trailer and poster, you wouldn’t automatically guess this is a short, as it looks and feels like a massive Hollywood blockbuster in scope and scale.

The Austrian filmmaker is behind the 2005 post-apocalyptic feature Ainoa, as well as a number of shorter films. His latest is set to premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival this April, and the Playlist just dropped this new trailer.

There are, admittedly, some things here that could wind up going very wrong here, like that dude noodling on the violin could easily wind up being cheesy and annoying rather than ominous. But it also looks like there should be more than enough going on here to catch your attention and counteract any such distractions.

Kalantari certainly appears to have the chops to move onto much bigger things, and maybe he’ll be using this as his resume or calling card, people have got jobs for a lot less. For The Shaman, he worked with a team from around the globe, including folks from Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, France, Ukraine, Serbia, the U.K., Iceland, and Germany. If he ever gets his hands on some Hollywood sized resources, he might be able to do something very special indeed.

Here’s a synopsis for The Shaman:

The dark year 2204, in a world that has seen 73 years of continuous war.

The face of conflict has changed. People kill people but they now rely on giant, intelligent battle machines to fight. Meanwhile, mankind has re-discovered the arts of magic and Shamanism and the Generals on both sides use well-trained spiritual warriors to face the threat of machines. Shamans have special senses; they are experts in all aspects of the “unseen” and the “beyond”. They believe that every person, animal, plant and object has a soul. When crossing the border to the Netherworld, the Shaman can find this soul and interact with it. That is what makes him such a deadly, highly effective weapon. They track and convert the souls of their enemies’ giant battle machines in a psychological soul-to-soul confrontation. But Shamans are not invulnerable. They are just people and can be killed like anyone else.

Shaman Joshua Van Kern and his squire Lene embark on a mission to convert a giant battle colossus and succeed where troops have failed.

This definitely looks like something we’re going to be into, so you can bet we’ll be keeping an eye on both The Shaman when it premieres soon, and Kalantari to see what he does next.

Shaman