Twenty-one minutes is all the short film Uncario needs to build a full science-fiction premise, and director Didier Konings spends every one of them with purpose.
What is Uncario about?
Set after humanity has retreated to a bare, climate-controlled colony on the Moon, the story follows a lone resident named A-153, plagued by recurring dreams of a green world he can no longer reach. Those dreams push him toward planning an escape, until he intercepts a distress call from Earth. Chasing the signal pulls him toward answers about both the dream world and the person on the other end of the transmission — answers the short saves for its final minutes. Evelyn Stommel voices a key role opposite Leon van Waas, giving the back half a two-hander intensity unusual for a 21-minute runtime.
About the cast
Leon van Waas carries the bulk of the film as its isolated protagonist, with Evelyn Stommel voicing the second half of the story's central exchange. It's a small cast by design — a two-hander built to fit a short runtime, where every line of dialogue has to do more work than it would in a feature-length script.
Context & significance
Uncario belongs to a tradition of short science fiction built around one confined setting and a slow reveal, a format festival programmers favor because it rewards a tight budget with a big premise. A 21-minute runtime sits well inside typical short-film festival categories — long enough to build a world and a mystery, short enough to keep both moving without padding. Didier Konings directs from within the American short-film scene rather than a studio system, a route a number of genre filmmakers have used to build festival reputations before moving to longer work.
Watching Uncario on Ktime
Uncario streams on K-Time with a free account login, no subscription trial or platform-hopping required. The service's Farsi interface lets Persian-speaking viewers browse and queue up short films like this one in their own language, and a 21-minute runtime makes it an easy addition to a longer watchlist for a single evening. There's no Persian dub or subtitle track on this title, so it plays in its original English.