Casting 'Empathic' Short Film

Open-faced, perceptive, a little lonely — the kind of person who listens too closely. After being dosed, she experiences other people's entire lives in overwhelming psychic floods, much of it near-wordless. The role demands enormous range — genuine tears, wonder, terror, bottomless empathy, and a devastating final turn — and carries nearly every scene, including a climax in which she is bound to a chair. Need an actor who can hold a silent close-up and break your heart in it.

David's research assistant — warm, sharp, reserved, exact; the human counterweight to his cold precision. She's caught in a quietly coercive relationship with him and carrying a secret, and her arc runs from composed professional to exposed, longing, and endangered. Subtle, intelligent work that cracks open into raw vulnerability. (Note: intimate beats are implied / handled via AI — no on-camera intimacy or nudity. Role includes a choreographed strangulation.)

Small and dignified — then frighteningly desperate. The first stranger Emily truly knows, she turns on a dime from grace to clawing, deranged need. A gift of a role for a senior actor: deep feeling, a hard pivot, and a flash of real menace. Tears and intensity required.

Sharper and more armored than Emily — her closest friend, and the provocateur who argues against empathy over cold coffee, then unknowingly sets the whole story in motion. Fast, funny-dark, merciless. One juicy dialogue scene; this is where the film's comic bite lives. Great for an actor with timing and edge.