In Suspension (18:36)
Amara Mesnik; Dust.tv; Facebook; IMDb; YouTube

This 2020 short film was presented by Dust in 2022.

To combat overpopulation, reality is divided into ten parallel strata by something called the Prism. We mainly see a woman named Lydia, who lives in Stratum 6 and works at the US Department of the Prism. Six seems like a fairly nice stratum, I guess, but I'm calling this short film 'dystopian' instead of just 'science fiction' partly because I'm sure the lower strata are worse in some way, even if we're not shown how. Also, it seems dystopian that people in different strata can't interact. (It seems like sometimes they can see each other and sometimes they can't, so I'm not sure how that works.) Anyway, Lydia has dreams of a man named Sam, with whom she is in love. He lives in Stratum 5, but in her dreams they regularly meet at an upscale bar or something. And Sam is up for evaluation for a possible promotion to Stratum 6, which would mean he and Lydia could be together in reality. And that's all I want to say about the plot. It has a kind of tragically ironic ending, though. It's a decent film.