Cerberus is the tale of two brothers, Steve and Stacey, who are stuck in the afterlife. They arrived there having been shot in a bungled attempt at robbing a grocery store. We start as Stacey, the elder of the two, accidentally shoots dead 'Cerberus', pet dog and best friend to the Devil. They have 5 minutes to work out what to do before He comes back and finds out.
A desperate, comical and frantic chase ensues bringing out the worst in each of them. A re-imagining of the greek mythological ordeals, the film explores the unhealthy cycles of behavior we get stuck in with the people that we love. This is the story of two brothers, tormenting each other in a scenario they can't escape.
SYNOPSIS
One of the many challenges in producing CERBERUS is for us to create our two characters and make them as believable, distinctive and attaching as possible. The film explores the love/hate relationship cycles we can get stuck in with the people close to us. In this case two brothers who represent two different sides of the same coin.
The film will be both a funny and intense action short, but also a portrait of two human beings at this crucial moment of time.
Structured as an allegory, the film's basic setup: hell, the devil, death etc... will never be spelled out, but subtly suggested through clues along the way. This will leave the audience space for their imagination to make up their own interpretation of the films conclusion. It's by achieving the right balance in distilling the surreal elements that we will keep the audience on the edge of their seats all the way along. In this case we'll make sure that every part of the setup stays real and gritty and the 'magic' only comes little by little. It's only towards the end of the film, in the same moment as the characters, that the audience will fully understand the surreal nature of their world, shedding a new light on the story.
DIRECTORS NOTE
Hell is a personal concept for each of us and, quite often, created by us...
As the film is filled with action, one of our top priorities is to inject as much pace and energy in the cinematography as the budget allows. Since we don't have the same budget as mainstream action films, we have to find creative solutions and be clever in the way we craft the film. We've done it in the past and we believe that we can do the same with CERBERUS.
The tone of the film is self-deprecating in a very British way, which will allow us to put the overall emphasis on humour rather than on spectacular. The two brothers are little
gangster-wannabes, dressed with a dubious taste. Their car is an old piece of crap that used to be fashionable 15 years ago....they are stranded in the middle of an eerie version of a no-man's land, freezing, in the miserable weather.
One of our main inspirations tonally is Samuel Beckett. He always manages to tackle serious subjects in an elegant and metaphorical way; similarly, our film explores patterns of relationships and death anxiety, but will always do so in a light-hearted and unpretentious way.
The definition of a work of art could be that you should always find something new every time you look at it. By structuring CERBERUS in an ambiguous way, this is what we're aiming for.
