AI-assisted Short Film | 00:04:05 | 2026

In an age dominated by social media and algorithm-driven beauty standards, an ordinary young woman becomes obsessed with achieving an “iconic face.” As she relentlessly pursues an internet-defined ideal of perfection, she suppresses her authentic self, replacing it with a carefully constructed persona shaped by dieting, filters, labels, and the constant gaze of others. When her true self and fabricated self begin to manifest as separate identities and confront one another, she is forced to ask a haunting question: Who really decides what we should look like? I Want an Iconic Face is a satirical psychological short that transforms contemporary beauty anxiety into a surreal visual allegory. Blending dark humor with striking imagery, it explores how algorithms, social media, and collective expectations reshape our identities—revealing that the cost of becoming unforgettable may be forgetting who we truly are.

Hanqu Zhu is a freshman majoring in Digital Media Art at Ningbo University of Finance & Economics. Her creative practice focuses on young people’s psychology and contemporary online social issues, with particular interest in appearance anxiety, internet public opinion, and self-identity. She often works with dreamcore and minimalist visual styles in short-form video creation.

Yueyao Liu is an undergraduate student majoring in Finance at Zhejiang Gongshang University. Interested in the intersection of digital technology and creative expression, she explores how AI and cross-disciplinary collaboration can expand visual communication beyond the boundaries of her primary field of study.