Confession

Confession is a machinima by Gianni Romeo that grew out of the director’s found-footage documentary work inspired by Marquis De Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom, specifically The Simple Passions, in which amateur porn videos sourced online are used to test the persistence of libertinage in contemporary culture. The project’s point of departure is an internet video of a young woman secretly recording her confession to a priest; initially conceived as a prologue for a new instalment, it ultimately became a standalone short once its self-contained intensity became clear. Structurally, the film draws on A.K.A. Serial Killer (1969/1975) by Masao Adachi, replacing the subject with environments: Romeo films the three churches of Los Santos inside Grand Theft Auto V, discarding the original image but retaining its audio, and setting up a deliberate tension between virtual architecture and intimate testimony.