CAFÉ FALLIBLE

The second feature film in Scenes from Parallel Lives

In a society rebuilt after the collapse of a liberal golden age, two performers running the wrong kind of café attract the wrong kind of attention.

Synopsis

In a city where human progress has been deliberately curtailed following the collapse of a once-open society, Cat and Fae run Café Fallible — a cultural sanctuary and space of quiet provocation where performance, satire and philosophy blur together.

When Fae begins hearing jazz-like transmissions containing instructions she cannot account for, the café becomes the centre of increasingly dangerous attention. What first appears to be a lo-fi radio experiment gradually suggests something else: contact with a non-human intelligence operating at the edges of perception.

Meanwhile, activists, believers and infiltrators of various persuasions gather around the café, each convinced they understand what is emerging there.

As hidden histories resurface and ideological certainty begins to fracture, Café Fallible becomes a struggle over who gets to interpret the future — and whether fallibility itself may be the last remaining form of freedom.

Project Status

Feature film. In post-production.

Visual & Stylistic Approach

• Fixed-camera tableaux
• Long passages without dialogue
• Cabaret performance as philosophical engine
• Deliberate technological anachronism: paper, wired communication, public telephones
• Science fiction displaced largely off-screen

Themes

• Consciousness and legitimacy
• The ethics of fallibility versus certainty
• Creativity, performance and social control
• Signals emerging from beyond authorised systems

Key Characters

Cat & Fae
Performers using satire, music and staged dialogue to maintain a fragile cultural sanctuary.

Colin
A conflicted infiltrator drawn into a world he was meant only to observe.

Jack & Jill
Political believers whose shared ideology fractures in opposite directions.

CREDITS

• Director / Writer / Composer / Editor Robert Iolini
• Director of Photography Santiago Villar Becker
• Producers Robert Iolini & Emi Morita

SPECIFICATIONS

• Project Type: Feature
• Genres: Drama, Sci-Fi, mystery
• Runtime: 70 minutes
• Completion Date: Currently in Post Production
• Country of Origin: Australia
• Country of Filming: Spain
• Language: English
• Shooting Format: Digital
• Aspect Ratio: 16.9
• Film Colour: Colour
• First-time Filmmaker: No
• Student Project: No