The Code (2025) dir. Eugene Kotlyarenko
Set during the pandemic in 2021, the film follows Celine and Jay, a couple retreating to a house in Joshua Tree in an attempt to repair their increasingly unstable relationship. What begins as a documentary project about modern life gradually transforms into a spiral of surveillance, paranoia, digital exposure, and emotional insecurity.
Eugene Kotlyarenko constructs the narrative through an overload of contemporary image-making systems: phones, hidden cameras, surveillance footage, screen recordings, and split-screen compositions constantly compete for attention. The result is intentionally chaotic and disorienting, mirroring the fragmented experience of living online.
At the center, Dasha Nekrasova and Peter Vack portray a couple trapped between intimacy and performance, suspicion and desire. Their unstable chemistry becomes part of the film’s larger examination of mediated relationships.
The visual style is frenetic and hyper-digital, combining rapid editing, simultaneous image streams, and shifting formats into an overwhelming audiovisual collage. Conversations rarely unfold conventionally; instead, information arrives in layers and interruptions.
The film reflects on surveillance culture, insecurity, internet identity, and emotional alienation in the age of constant connectivity. Rather than simply condemning digital life, it attempts to capture the confusion, overstimulation, and strange intimacy produced by contemporary online existence.
Premiering at the Fantasia International Film Festival, the film stands as an ambitious and abrasive portrait of relationships shaped by technological saturation and social paranoia.
Production Companies
Field Trip Media
#EugeneKotlyarenko #TheCode #IndependentCinema #ExperimentalFilm #cinemamonamour
A romcom for the terminally online.
When young filmmaker Celine sets out to make a documentary about the pandemic, she turns the camera on her crypto-trader boyfriend Jay—who fights back with hidden cameras of his own.
From the quintessential cinematic satirist of the 2020s, Eugene Kotlyarenko’s THE CODE is now streaming exclusively on MUBI.
The Code is Hitting the Road🚗🎞
April 17-May 15🗓️❗️
Tickets on Sale Now (linktree in bio)
Special Q&As after most screenings🫨
Week long runs in NY/LA/Montreal/??
1st screening is a week from today in Miami🍾Additional Cities TBD
Thank you @monumentreleasing for making this tour a reality!
