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OUT OF BOUNDS is a film program that takes a cue from ICED!: I Can End Deportation (2008), a role-playing video game in the ArteArchive that educates players on immigration laws on detention and deportation that affect legal permanent residents, asylum seekers, students, and undocumented people in the U.S.
The program comprises recent shorts by filmmakers Yanni Mohand Briki, Bahareh Khoshooee, Sara Sadik, and Firas Shehadeh, who take different approaches to retooling gaming software and their aesthetics. Presented together, their works showcase a range of potentials present in gaming as a mass medium–education, entertainment, escape, world building–and through modding and aesthetic interventions, the ability to also hijack meaning.
Bahareh Khoshooee’s MAXMOTIVES: Episode 1 (2020) is an ongoing web series that follows the life of seven alter egos and an unwanted newborn “non-resident alien,” filmed and produced in The Sims 2 video game.
Part of Firas Shehadeh’s ongoing research into video games and Palestinian youth culture, Like An Event In A Dream Dreamt By Another — Rehearsal (2023) combines footage of Twitch streamers and custom game mods for Grand Theft Auto V to explore how players simulate life under occupation.
Also using Grand Theft Auto V, Sara Sadik’s Khtobtogone (2021) is a character study of protagonist Zine, who wrestles with heartbreak while reflecting more broadly on masculinity and coming of age in Marseille’s Maghrebi community.
The program closes with Yannis Mohand Briki’s Yesterday was my birthday so I asked for legs to run away (2025), which considers the fate of video game characters left behind by players, serving as both a meditation on virtual obsolescence and an elegy for the optimism of the late 2000s.
OUT OF BOUNDS is co-presented by ArteEast and Millennium Film Workshop, and guest curated by May Makki. This program is part of ArteEast’s legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, which presents films from the ArteArhive in dialogue with contemporary voices. The films will be screened in-person at Millennium Film Workshop on June 17th followed by a discussion with Bahareh Khoshooee moderated by the curator.
Original program materials by ArteEast licensed under CC BY 4.0. This does not apply to films or third-party content.
In the film, we follow the monologue of a Sims child, speaking to someone who left the game long ago, abandoning the avatar to live alone in this digital ruin for years. Every day is their birthday—yet this seemingly joyful event takes on a more unsettling tone once we realize the infinite number of cakes symbolize the passage of time in a world where nothing ever changes. The flaming ruins of obsolete virtual worlds don’t gather dust; they remain exactly as we left them—vivid, colorful, and empty.
In this world, there was only one rule: don’t use the phone.
But unsupervised, the child—having seen a strange advertisement offering companionship for their birthday—breaks that sole rule and summons these mysterious guests.
In doing so, they unknowingly open a portal to disturbing creatures—digital anomalies that begin to corrupt the space of this simulation, which, despite its solitude, had remained peaceful. Now, this once-quiet virtual cocoon is under siege.
The child must flee toward the only person they've ever known: their creator.
But has the corruption brought by these dark guests altered their innocent intentions?
If they manage to escape the simulation, what might be the consequences of their sorrow turned to rage?
- Year2024
- Runtime10 minutes
- LanguageEnglish
- CountryFrance, Switzerland
- PremiereMilan Machinima Festival 2025 in Los Angeles
- GenreMachinima / Experimental
- Subtitle LanguageEnglish
- DirectorYannis Briki
- FilmmakerYannis Briki
- CinematographerYannis Briki
OUT OF BOUNDS is a film program that takes a cue from ICED!: I Can End Deportation (2008), a role-playing video game in the ArteArchive that educates players on immigration laws on detention and deportation that affect legal permanent residents, asylum seekers, students, and undocumented people in the U.S.
The program comprises recent shorts by filmmakers Yanni Mohand Briki, Bahareh Khoshooee, Sara Sadik, and Firas Shehadeh, who take different approaches to retooling gaming software and their aesthetics. Presented together, their works showcase a range of potentials present in gaming as a mass medium–education, entertainment, escape, world building–and through modding and aesthetic interventions, the ability to also hijack meaning.
Bahareh Khoshooee’s MAXMOTIVES: Episode 1 (2020) is an ongoing web series that follows the life of seven alter egos and an unwanted newborn “non-resident alien,” filmed and produced in The Sims 2 video game.
Part of Firas Shehadeh’s ongoing research into video games and Palestinian youth culture, Like An Event In A Dream Dreamt By Another — Rehearsal (2023) combines footage of Twitch streamers and custom game mods for Grand Theft Auto V to explore how players simulate life under occupation.
Also using Grand Theft Auto V, Sara Sadik’s Khtobtogone (2021) is a character study of protagonist Zine, who wrestles with heartbreak while reflecting more broadly on masculinity and coming of age in Marseille’s Maghrebi community.
The program closes with Yannis Mohand Briki’s Yesterday was my birthday so I asked for legs to run away (2025), which considers the fate of video game characters left behind by players, serving as both a meditation on virtual obsolescence and an elegy for the optimism of the late 2000s.
OUT OF BOUNDS is co-presented by ArteEast and Millennium Film Workshop, and guest curated by May Makki. This program is part of ArteEast’s legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, which presents films from the ArteArhive in dialogue with contemporary voices. The films will be screened in-person at Millennium Film Workshop on June 17th followed by a discussion with Bahareh Khoshooee moderated by the curator.
Original program materials by ArteEast licensed under CC BY 4.0. This does not apply to films or third-party content.
In the film, we follow the monologue of a Sims child, speaking to someone who left the game long ago, abandoning the avatar to live alone in this digital ruin for years. Every day is their birthday—yet this seemingly joyful event takes on a more unsettling tone once we realize the infinite number of cakes symbolize the passage of time in a world where nothing ever changes. The flaming ruins of obsolete virtual worlds don’t gather dust; they remain exactly as we left them—vivid, colorful, and empty.
In this world, there was only one rule: don’t use the phone.
But unsupervised, the child—having seen a strange advertisement offering companionship for their birthday—breaks that sole rule and summons these mysterious guests.
In doing so, they unknowingly open a portal to disturbing creatures—digital anomalies that begin to corrupt the space of this simulation, which, despite its solitude, had remained peaceful. Now, this once-quiet virtual cocoon is under siege.
The child must flee toward the only person they've ever known: their creator.
But has the corruption brought by these dark guests altered their innocent intentions?
If they manage to escape the simulation, what might be the consequences of their sorrow turned to rage?
- Year2024
- Runtime10 minutes
- LanguageEnglish
- CountryFrance, Switzerland
- PremiereMilan Machinima Festival 2025 in Los Angeles
- GenreMachinima / Experimental
- Subtitle LanguageEnglish
- DirectorYannis Briki
- FilmmakerYannis Briki
- CinematographerYannis Briki