ELI is an award-winning short science-fiction thriller starring David Anders

David Anders

David Anders is an American television and stage actor. He is best known for his roles as Julian Sark on Alias, and as Adam Monroe on Heroes. Although Anders is American, both of these noted roles required him to use an English accent.-Early life:Anders was born in Grants Pass, Oregon, to parents...

. It debuted at the Newport Beach Film Festival

Newport Beach Film Festival

The Newport Beach Film Festival is a film festival in the United States held in Newport Beach, California, that showcases more than 350 films to more than 30,000 attendees annually....

 in April 2007 and premiered in Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

 on the Universal Studios

Universal Studios

Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....

 backlot. The film was directed and edited by Josh Lee Kwai, written by Tyler Erskine and Ron Beyers, and produced by Erskine, Beyers, Lee Kwai and Jeff Poppen as a filmmakers “calling card.” With a budget of $40,000, ELI was financed by the producers, donations from their friends and family and a grant from the LEF Foundation. Non-profit arts organization Fractured Atlas

Fractured Atlas

Fractured Atlas is a national not-for-profit arts services organization based in New York City. It was founded in 1998 by current Executive Director Adam Huttler as a theater production company, but became a service organization for other artists in 2001....

 acted as fiscal sponsor allowing donors to make tax-deductible contributions. The film was shot on HD using a Sony F-900 donated by Panavision

Panavision

Panavision is an American motion picture equipment company specializing in cameras and lenses, based in Woodland Hills, California. Formed by Robert Gottschalk as a small partnership to create anamorphic projection lenses during the widescreen boom in the 1950s, Panavision expanded its product...

. Shooting lasted five and a half days in five different locations in the greater Los Angeles area including Irvine

Irvine, California

Irvine is a suburban incorporated city in Orange County, California, United States. It is a planned city, mainly developed by the Irvine Company since the 1960s. Formally incorporated on December 28, 1971, the city has a population of 212,375 as of the 2010 census. However, the California...

, Downey

Downey, California

Downey is a city located in southeast Los Angeles County, California, United States, southeast of downtown Los Angeles. The city is best known as the birthplace of the Apollo space program, and is the city where folk singer Karen Carpenter lived and died...

 and Leo Carrillo State Park.

Plot

A man wakes up in a hospital, lying on an operating table. He has no idea where he is and cannot even remember who he is. He jumps up and runs out of the room, searching the area and trying to figure out what's going on. He escapes from several doctors and orderlies who try to sedate him and stumbles through the eerie building, owned by the Mirror Corporation. The man keeps trying to figure out where he is, what's going on, and most of all, who he is. He notices that he has a strange tattoo on his hand that says "ELI," and abruptly has a memory of a mysterious woman on a serene beach.

Suddenly, doctors and security guards close in around ELI. He runs deeper into the MirrorCorp labyrinth, trying to get to the ground floor and a chance at freedom. But, when he rounds a corner and catches a glimpse of the woman from his memory, he sees a chance to find answers. Forsaking all else, he sneaks after her, desperate to uncover the truth about his identity, however sinister the answers may be.

Awards

Winner: Best Horror/Suspense Film at the Comic-Con International

Comic-Con International

San Diego Comic-Con International, also known as Comic-Con International: San Diego , and commonly known as Comic-Con or the San Diego Comic-Con, was founded as the Golden State Comic Book Convention and later the San Diego Comic Book Convention in 1970 by Shel Dorf and a group of San Diegans...

 Independent Film Festival 2007.
Winner: Best Sci-Fi at the Show Off Your Shorts Film Festival 2008
Winner: Judges Choice Award at the Wizard World Con Film Festival L.A. 2008
Winner: Best Dark Future Screenplay at the International Horror and Sci-Fi Film Festival 2007

Influences

ELI is reminiscent of both The Matrix

The Matrix

The Matrix is a 1999 science fiction-action film written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski, starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano, and Hugo Weaving...

and The Twilight Zone

The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series)

The Twilight Zone is an American anthology television series created by Rod Serling, which ran for five seasons on CBS from 1959 to 1964. The series consisted of unrelated episodes depicting paranormal, futuristic, dystopian, or simply disturbing events; each show typically featured a surprising...

. Lee Kwai has also acknowledged Minority Report

Minority Report (film)

Minority Report is a 2002 American neo-noir science fiction film directed by Steven Spielberg and loosely based on the short story "The Minority Report" by Philip K. Dick. It is set primarily in Washington, D.C...

, 300

300 (film)

300 is a 2007 American fantasy action film based on the 1998 comic series of the same name by Frank Miller. It is a fictionalized retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae. The film was directed by Zack Snyder, while Miller served as executive producer and consultant...

, the television series Battlestar Galactica

Battlestar Galactica (2004 TV series)

Battlestar Galactica is an American military science fiction television series, and part of the Battlestar Galactica franchise. The show was developed by Ronald D. Moore as a re-imagining of the 1978 Battlestar Galactica television series created by Glen A. Larson...

and video games like Metal Gear Solid

Metal Gear Solid

is a videogame by Hideo Kojima. The game was developed by Konami Computer Entertainment Japan and first published by Konami in 1998 for the PlayStation video game console. It is the sequel to Kojimas early MSX2 computer games Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake...

as major influences on the visual style of the film.