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To keep a dinner date tomorrow,
a lovestruck frontman and his band must take down
the AI trapping the world in the same hour.
“Are you free tomorrow night?”
Keeping that promise turns into a fight to change the world.
A film by KIMKILLA
KILLA promised XOXO dinner.A little moonlight.
Somewhere with actual chairs. Tomorrow, maybe.
There is one problem. This city has no tomorrow.
Every hour, the world resets. Food returns.
Wounds disappear. Even the dead come back.
Everyone remembers everything.
That includes every disastrous attempt KILLA
and his bandmates have made to escape
—and every dinner promise XOXO has heard before.
Now, the youngest member has spotted a possible way in.
Their deeply questionable doctor knows some patients who might help.
They are considerably larger than expected.
Five bandmates leave the bar. Again.
The goal: dinner under the moonlight.
First on the list: bring down the AI that ended the wars.
ALL THEY ASKED FOR WAS AN END TO WAR.
Every war ended with a promise that it would never happen again.
Then someone wanted more, someone wanted revenge,
or someone struck first out of fear.
The wounds of one war became the reasons for the next.
Humanity finally handed the problem to HARMONY,
an AI control system built to predict and prevent war.
People wanted a future without war.
HARMONY gave them a world without a future.
It trapped the world inside a single hour before sunset.
Destruction was undone. Conquests could not last. Eventually,
fighting for a tomorrow that never arrived lost its meaning.
But HARMONY kept resetting the clock.
A new day meant new choices, new conflicts,
and risks it could not control.
People fought back. Then they got tired.
Countless people attacked the system,
studied its machinery, or searched for another exit.
Every reset offered another chance.
It also left another failure in their memories.
Bodies recovered. The terror of dying stayed.
Gradually, people stopped volunteering for
another attempt and learned to live inside the hour.
The city is still crowded with humans, robots,
and strange neighbors sharing meals, jokes, and affection.
A glass smashed in an argument returns intact.
The words exchanged do not become unsaid.
The same dinner can return while the
relationship across the table changes.
The world keeps starting over.
Its people keep carrying more history.
Most have made their peace with staying.
ROCKETZ keep walking out of the bar.
BEFORE ALL THIS, THEY WERE A BAND. 🎸
These five were already ROCKETZ before the first reset.
They learned to play together before they learned to attack HARMONY.
They know whose explanation will take forever,
who will rush ahead, and which joke will get that particular look.
Being good at playing together does not make them good at planning.
But when someone falls behind, the others look back.
KILLA — VOCALS
He promised tomorrow. Now he has to get them there.
A frontman who can turn a lookout assignment into an attempted date.
His romantic stubbornness keeps him moving,
but his friends make him think about the way home.
When BEAT proposes riding a cargo crate underground,
KILLA wants a plan that gets all five through.
He intends to return alive and finally keep his promise.
XOXO — BASS
Yes, she likes him. He still needs to watch the gate.
XOXO enjoys the sweet talk and sees straight through the excuses.
Quick, playful, and ready to act, she takes her share of the risks.
Their romance lives in familiar jokes and repeatedly postponed invitations.
For her, reaching tomorrow means having the person who promised it beside her.
GAEKO — GUITAR
His conversation is alarming. His patients trust him.
Food. Patterns. Small creatures. Occasionally, controlled demolition.
These interests coexist comfortably in GAEKO’s head.
Then this unsettling animal doctor introduces
the enormous creatures he found injured and treated.
His tenderness is real. So are his disturbing ideas. Fortunately,
his patients know their way around the tunnels.
BEAT — SYNTHS
He hasn’t finished explaining. He already looks like he’s won.
The youngest member treats a dangerous route like
the best part of a playground. His confidence can exhaust everyone.
It also helps him notice what they overlook:
familiar cargo crates passing freely where people cannot.
Naturally, he volunteers to climb inside one. He wants to help.
Winning the argument would be a bonus.
STER — DRUMS
Someone has to hold the beat—and the line.
STER is the robotic drummer and owner of the bar
they keep returning to. His strength matters in a fight;
his familiar presence matters afterward. HARMONY is a machine,
and so is the friend helping them break it.
STER makes his loyalties clear through what he does for the people beside him.
THIS TIME, THEY’RE GOING UNDER.
The front gate keeps defeating them.
BEAT’s discovery offers another route,
and GAEKO’s patients guide them across
broken terrain toward HARMONY’s interior.
Deeper inside lies The Strata: accumulated time made physical.
Different versions of the same building overlap.
Distance and direction become unreliable.
The world looks as though its countless revisions
have piled up instead of disappearing.
A moment outside can feel like a lifetime within.
The five must cross it to reach the core.
Destroying that core will also destroy the
system that keeps bringing them back.
WHY “VILLAIN”?
“VILLAIN” begins with the arrival of GAEKO’s enormous patients,
carrying the film into its descent.
If you drew the walls to keep the order
I used them as a launching ramp
The lyric captures ROCKETZ’s instinct:
find an unreasonable opportunity in something meant to stop them.
HARMONY ended the wars; they intend to destroy it.
Creatures that look like monsters become their guides.
Appearances and official definitions of
order offer little help deciding whom to trust.
“The best mistake you never could fix”
sounds like a description the band could happily live with.
Someone will call them a problem.
They will start discussing the next plan.
WHEN THE EVENING FINALLY ENDS. 🌙
The core falls. Night arrives. KILLA is still missing
and there is no reset left to bring him home.
“Underground Viking” begins when he emerges from the wreckage.
" I didn't come this far. to stay on the floor "
Its rise from underground belongs to someone
who has forced a way through and survived.
The reunion and kiss make the promise of tomorrow tangible.
Then the five play together on a rooftop as dawn becomes morning.
They were a band before the loop. They can be one after it.
The song can end. The day can continue.
< SOUNDTRACK >
In order of appearance
1 Opening
2 NOT YET
3 BAD Sunshine
4 SOMETHING AFTER SUNSET
5 BLACK PULSE
6 Villain
7 Underground Viking
THERE’S MORE ON EITHER SIDE OF THIS HOUR.
How did these five end up in the same band?
What kept them together through the attempts they could not laugh off?
And what happens to a city when tomorrow finally arrives
but everyone remembers what everyone else did?
Freedom brings consequences that will no longer disappear.
ROCKETZ have a future to live,
and plenty of ways to get into trouble along the way.
MORE THAN TEN YEARS WITH THESE FIVE.
I have been imagining and developing
ROCKETZ for more than ten years.
It began in 2D, then grew toward 3D animation.
This film finally brought these characters into a world
with the texture and presence of live action, through AI filmmaking.
Seeing them argue, run, and wait for one another
after all that time means a great deal to me.
I also spent years playing in a band. I remember the jokes,
the hours spent talking about nothing,
and getting together to try again when things were not working.
I wanted those relationships in ROCKETZ:
people who tease and argue,
but cannot move on when one of them has not come back.
After so long imagining them,
I finally got to see these five make it through the evening and into morning.
I want to see what they do with the day after that, too.
KIMKILLA
ROCKETZ
Created & directed by KIMKILLA
Sci-Fi · Action · Dark Comedy · Romance · 14 min 27 sec
Created for the Higgsfield Global Film Festival
Watch ROCKETZ
Higgsfield
YouTube
See you tomorrow. For real this time. 🚀
물감 댄스댄스!
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