Golden Shopping Arcade
- Country: Italy
- Genre: Sci-Fi Short Film
- Category: Final Cut Selection
- Runtime: 29:00
Created by Italo-Irish filmmakers Neri and Skino Ricci, Golden Shopping Arcade imagines a desensitised world, surrendered almost entirely to free enterprise in its most militant and unshaken form. It takes place within a dystopian – yet eerily familiar – setting in which hospital patients are screened for the burden they place on the monolithic Farmax operation, typically refused the health care they require. The system is airtight and unfeeling, and it is the duty of the bewildered protagonist Carlo to expedite the will of corporation and machine, admitting or rejecting patients based on the assessment of the computer in front of him. Immune to the inertia of those around him, Carlo pushes back against the establishment, granting hospital passes on humane grounds, much to the dissatisfaction of his unyielding boss. When Carlo learns of the Golden Shopping Arcade (and its unsanctioned possibilities), he resolves to turn the tables on his unhappy plight once and for all. Working covertly behind the scenes, he begins taking aggressive charge of his life, inviting a more devastating fate than he ever imagined…