Future of Life Institute | Short Film

Delisted was commissioned as part of the Future of Life Institute‘s ongoing work to bring the conversation about AI’s impact to audiences beyond policy circles. The brief was a drama rather than an argument: a story that would carry the weight of the subject through people rather than exposition.

The film was shot over three days and one night in March 2026, with a cast of more than 20 actors and around 100 extras, at Holy Trinity Church in Blackburn, Ribblesdale High School in Clitheroe and an office building on Oxford Road in central Manchester, with further filming in Barrowford and at Recode XR Studio in Manchester. It was shot on Arri 35 with anamorphic lenses by director of photography Lorenzo Levrini, whose recent features include Wasteman and The Kidnapping of Arabella.

Space Digital handled production, post-production and all visual effects entirely in-house. Delivering a 28-minute drama on that schedule, with that cast and that scale of location work, depended on it. Production decisions were made with the post pipeline already in view, and shots were designed knowing exactly what could be achieved downstream, which removed the handover points where time and budget usually go.

The visual effects were approached as a small number of sequences done properly rather than as a volume job. Delisted opens on a computer-generated environment. Both trucks, the church and the city behind them are CG, created by the VFX department at Space Digital, alongside further environment work throughout the film.

The second major sequence is the one that occupies the least screen time. The audience gets a glimpse behind APPOLLO, the calm text-only interface SYB1L presents to the world, and sees the true processes of the AI system at the centre of the film. It is on screen for roughly five seconds. It took over six weeks from concept to completion.

The same thinking runs through the rest of the motion graphics, which carry the storytelling here rather than decorating it. The delisting at the centre of the film is an administrative act rather than a violent one, so much of its tension is held on screens, in what appears and disappears, and in the moment a person becomes a record that no longer exists. All of this work was completed in-house by the team at Space.

“Michael and I had worked in anamorphic together before and we felt it was the right format to tell this story. In the collective cultural consciousness, viewers still associate anamorphic with the golden age of science fiction cinema: Blade Runner, Close Encounters and so on. Furthermore, we were making a film that warns against the dangers of AI, so we felt it appropriate that the photography have a human character and texture, and given that we were shooting digital, the poetic distortion of anamorphic was the perfect way to achieve this.”

“Shooting anamorphic always proves more of a challenge with VFX but Space were amazing at making it work and I’m very proud of the result.”

Lorenzo Levrini, director of photography

“One of the most time-consuming motion graphics sequences in the film is only about five seconds long. We see behind APPOLLO, SYB1L’s calm, elegant, text-only user interface, and it had to do two things at once. It had to look like something a real system would be running, and it had to be readable enough that an audience understands what it is doing to people while it is on screen. A month went on the concept design alone. Most of the intricacies the audience will never register, but if those details were not there, the whole premise of the film would have felt fake.”

Simon Blackledge, Head of Post, Space Digital

Delisted is available to watch on Omeleto from 6 October 2026. More about the film, the issues it raises and the Future of Life Institute’s work is at delisted.film.