Limit Exceeded
Part of Shorts by the Sea Vol. 8
Limit Exceeded
Short Live Action
Ben and Emma share a quiet, ordinary life together in their home. They wake to rain, make breakfast, tease each other gently, and move through familiar routines shaped by love and shared history. When Emma reveals she is pregnant, the moment feels fragile but hopeful—a chance at starting over after a past loss neither of them fully names.
As the days pass, they prepare a nursery and imagine the future. Yet small, unsettling
glitches begin to intrude: Emma’s hand flickers, her face briefly distorts, moments stutter
and reset. Ben notices—but tries to ignore them.
The illusion collapses abruptly. Ben jolts awake inside a cramped space pod orbiting Mars.
Emma was never physically there. She was a holographic simulation Ben has been secretly running to survive the isolation of his mission and the grief of losing her. The ship’s AI shuts the program down, warning that the simulation has exceeded its memory limits and threatens life support.
Alone in space, Ben clutches the only physical remnants of Emma and their unborn child—
a photograph and a sonogram—breaking down as the pod drifts silently above the planet.
The story then reframes itself again: the Mars mission is revealed to be a story-in-progress, played as a simulation game by Isabel, a twelve-year-old girl on Earth. She is celebrating her birthday with her mother, her father, and Deena, a loving, chaotic auntie figure. The family laughs, eats, and shares warmth—everything Ben was reaching for.
When Isabel explains her unfinished story—about a man on Mars who builds a hologram of the woman he loves because she died—it becomes clear that the layers of grief, memory, and simulation are still bleeding into one another.
The film ends on an intimate, ordinary moment of family life—until a faint glitch ripples
across Isabel’s face, quietly suggesting that even this reality may not be as stable as it
seems. Limit Exceeded explores grief, love, and human connection across a spectrum of
realities—where the stories we tell to survive loss blur the line between memory,
simulation, and truth, and ultimately fracture our understanding of identity itself.
Ben and Emma share a quiet, ordinary life together in their home. They wake to rain, make breakfast, tease each other gently, and move through familiar routines shaped by love and shared history. When Emma reveals she is pregnant, the moment feels fragile but hopeful—a chance at starting over after a past loss neither of them fully names.
As the days pass, they prepare a nursery and imagine the future. Yet small, unsettling
glitches begin to intrude: Emma’s hand flickers, her face briefly distorts, moments stutter
and reset. Ben notices—but tries to ignore them.
The illusion collapses abruptly. Ben jolts awake inside a cramped space pod orbiting Mars.
Emma was never physically there. She was a holographic simulation Ben has been secretly running to survive the isolation of his mission and the grief of losing her. The ship’s AI shuts the program down, warning that the simulation has exceeded its memory limits and threatens life support.
Alone in space, Ben clutches the only physical remnants of Emma and their unborn child—
a photograph and a sonogram—breaking down as the pod drifts silently above the planet.
The story then reframes itself again: the Mars mission is revealed to be a story-in-progress, played as a simulation game by Isabel, a twelve-year-old girl on Earth. She is celebrating her birthday with her mother, her father, and Deena, a loving, chaotic auntie figure. The family laughs, eats, and shares warmth—everything Ben was reaching for.
When Isabel explains her unfinished story—about a man on Mars who builds a hologram of the woman he loves because she died—it becomes clear that the layers of grief, memory, and simulation are still bleeding into one another.
The film ends on an intimate, ordinary moment of family life—until a faint glitch ripples
across Isabel’s face, quietly suggesting that even this reality may not be as stable as it
seems. Limit Exceeded explores grief, love, and human connection across a spectrum of
realities—where the stories we tell to survive loss blur the line between memory,
simulation, and truth, and ultimately fracture our understanding of identity itself.
Runtime
15
Language
English
Director
Setareh Samandari
Cast
Brandon Stacy,
Cheyenne Isabel Wells,
Tracie Thoms
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