Check out These Striking Posters for Tom Hardiman’s Trippy Short ‘Pitch Black Panacea’

‘Pitch Black Panacea’ premieres today on Nowness.

Directed by Somesuch’s Tom Hardiman, the short film is the story of two strangers, Amy and Carl, who undertake a bizarre experience. To fix their lazy eyes, the pair agree to go through treatment that will have profound effects on their sense of self and place in the world.

The film is based on a real procedure carried out a few years ago to correct lazy eye disorder by placing the subject in a completely dark room for up to ten days. This experiment reminded Tom of his grandfather who suffered from Charles Bonnet Syndrome, where visual hallucinations occur as a result of vision loss. The resulting artistic project is a monochrome animated trip, interpreting the images that Amy and Carl’s brains serve up to fill the extended absence of light.

Tom collaborated with animator Chris Cornwell, composer Daniel Brandt, and actors Gbenga Akinnagbe (The Wire, The Good Wife), Martha Plimpton (Raising Hope, The Goonies) and Daphne Rubin-Vega (Rent, Sex and the City), to create the short.

Check out the posters for the film, which brilliantly convey the stark aesthetic that Tom created.

Watch the trailer here:

And head to Nowness to watch the whole film.