Characters (2020)
Country: Ukraine
Genre: Thriller
Production: Mettel Studios, CTTC
Writer/Producer/Director: Vinsent Mettel
Logline: A group of actors arrives for a bizarre casting led by an eccentric director and her twin assistants. What begins as an awkward comedy slowly turns into a locked-room mystery, as the rules of the audition — and reality itself — begin to collapse.
The director is eccentric, unsettling, and impossible to please. Her twin assistants observe in silence. One by one, the actors perform — awkwardly, desperately, often disastrously — turning the audition into a strange, almost cruel comedy.
But just as the director prepares to speak, the tone shifts. The casting space becomes sealed. Roles dissolve. Time behaves strangely. What once felt ridiculous now becomes suspicious.
As the actors search for meaning and escape, patterns begin to emerge — in names, in words, in the order of events. A young actress senses that the casting is no longer about talent or choice, but about imagination and control.
What unfolds is a story that moves beyond the audition itself, questioning who is watching, who is inventing, and how far a fantasy can go before it turns violent.