What Remains Above

Animation/Drama: Directed by Xiangzi Xu (China & Pasadena, CA; UCLA) What Remains Above is an animated short film about memory, loss, and the passage of time. The protagonist, Mory—a fragment of Memory that has lost its “Me”—moves through the final chapter of his life without realizing it. As he struggles to maintain ordinary routines, his memories quietly disappear. Rather than vanishing, each forgotten memory falls into an inverted world below: a vast landscape composed of emotional fragments, distorted places, and echoes of experiences long past. While Mory’s present reality grows increasingly empty, the world beneath becomes richer and more alive, accumulating everything time has taken away. Through surreal imagery and environmental storytelling, the film explores the relationship between memory and identity, imagining forgetting not as erasure but as transformation. What Remains Above reflects on aging, mortality, and the possibility that what we lose may continue to exist in another form, even after we can no longer hold on to it. Runtime: 6:38, Founders Theatre