Tears in the Rain
Entry updated 13 October 2025. Tagged: Film.
South African short film (2017). Andrew MacDonald Films. Directed by Christopher Grant Harvey. Written by Harvey and Evan James Demskey. Cast includes Sean Cameron Michael and Russel Savadier. 11 minutes. Colour.
While most filmed fan fiction is limited in exposure to Conventions and variously popular corners of the internet, this tribute to Blade Runner (1982) played at film festivals around the world, picking up several awards on the way, including one at the London Independent Film Festival. Replicant hunter John Kampff (Michael) enters a café and inserts a device into the neck of Andy Smith (Savadier), who is quietly having a drink with his artificial parakeet. Kampff explains that the device will shut down Smith's nervous system in a few minutes, and that Smith is a Nexus 3 replicant, a model that has proved unreliable and is being taken out of service. Smith protests, insisting he has Memories of childhood and his family, which Kampff says were planted there and that Smith is really only a few years old. Smith argues that even if he is a replicant, his memories are as real to him as any human's are. He shuts down, Kampff remaining unmoved.
Neatly rehashing the natural vs. manufactured, real vs. illusory, human vs. Android debates of the original film (and the Philip K Dick novel it is nominally based on) in only a few minutes, with one location and two cast members, this modest but very professional looking film lovingly recreates the rain-streaked, neon-lit ambience of the original, including a note-perfect homage to Vangelis's score. As a small-scale unofficial sidebar to the Blade Runner canon, it is a model of its kind. [CWa]
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