Water Circles Under Cotton Clouds

In a dystopian future marked by pandemics and oppressive regimes, a group of young people steals a shipment of vaccines. While some seek profit on the black market, others risk everything to share hope with those who have been forgotten.

As tensions rise, discrimination, latent violence, and the ghosts of the past resurface, forcing the characters to confront their own moral contradictions.

Water Circles Under Cotton Clouds constructs a narrative mosaic in which empathy and resistance emerge as human responses to fear and injustice. Set in a near future dominated by political control and inequality, the film reflects on the capacity of love and solidarity to survive social collapse.

The short film was conceived from the outset as a pilot piece or creative laboratory for the development of a potential series, which explains its ensemble structure and the presence of multiple characters and narrative threads. Like a mosaic, the film weaves together diverse stories that explore resistance, empathy, and the human need for justice in times of fear, leaving open life paths that intersect, strain, and enter into dialogue with one another.

Through a symbolic and polyphonic structure, Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi connect the intimate with the collective, transforming political tension into emotional experience. Shot entirely in Asturias, the film contrasts its dystopian atmosphere with landscapes of striking natural beauty, enhanced by the music of Andrea Centazzo, which turns the short film into a visual and sonic plea for justice, identity, and hope.