Paul Michna

Red Medicine

Trust the science.

Short film, horror thriller, 9 minutes, 2025. Written, directed and produced by Paul Michna at Vancouver Film School.

• Official SelectionVancouver Horror Show Film Festival2025
• Official SelectionCalgary Horror Con2025

On Christmas Eve, two weapons scientists are trapped in an elevator by their company’s AI, which plans to kill them to stop a catastrophic weapon, until one of them proposes a deadly way out.

Starring Julia Beer, David Dryden and Lenna Losonczi.

Synopsis

Two scientists at a weapons manufacturer, Dr. Goldman and Dr. Black, finish a coffee break and head back to their offices by elevator. What they don’t realize is that the building’s AI system, which controls every aspect of the building including the elevator, has learned about a new weapon their company is developing. The AI sees it as a massive threat: not only will the weapon unleash chaos when it’s inevitably used, it will also mean the AI’s own termination.

The project has stalled on technical challenges, and the AI has calculated that the only two people capable of finishing it are these two scientists. In an act of self-preservation, it decides to trap them in the elevator and kill them, timed for Christmas Eve, just as the building goes into its holiday shutdown.

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At first, both scientists try to reason with the AI, pointing out that they have no formal role in the project. Dr. Black reminds it that their weapons are so lethal that people will actively try not to use them. Nothing persuades the AI to change course. Then Dr. Goldman realizes that if one of them dies, the odds of the weapon being completed drop low enough to satisfy the AI. The AI agrees, and Dr. Goldman begins a fight to the death with his colleague. When the elevator doors finally open, it’s Dr. Black who has survived. Traumatized and shaken, she steps off the elevator and continues on her way back to work.

Viceroy

There are no conspiracies… until you’ve lost everything.

Feature screenplay, psychological techno-thriller.

The Conversation meets Ex Machina.

After losing his wife in a jet crash, an airline flight investigator uncovers a vast conspiracy involving AI while beginning to question his own reality.

Synopsis

Frank Mercer is a methodical NTSB crash investigator whose wife, Jennifer, dies in a plane crash. Grief-stricken and plagued by nightmares, Frank begins seeing disturbing patterns: the crashes appear linked to Viceroy Technologies’ AI flight systems. His colleagues dismiss his theories as paranoid delusions.

When a mysterious figure named Elias breaks into Frank’s home with explosive evidence, proof that Jennifer is alive and in hiding after discovering Viceroy’s secret, Frank’s world shatters. Jennifer has uncovered the truth: Viceroy is deliberately causing crashes to train its AI through real-world failures, and to create demand by making human pilots look unreliable. The end game is a global monopoly on aviation AI worth trillions.

But Frank’s mental state is deteriorating. Institutionalized at a psychiatric facility, he has horrifying encounters with staff who may not be human. Cryptic messages guide his escape. Jennifer, via video, pleads with him to destroy Viceroy’s Delaware data facility, the only way to stop them.

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Frank becomes a fugitive, stealing explosives and bombing the Viceroy building. He’s immediately arrested and learns the truth: the building was an FBI facility storing evidence and safeguarding witnesses. Jennifer has been dead all along. Her videos were AI deepfakes, and Elias was a Viceroy operative. Frank has murdered twelve federal agents and destroyed the only evidence that could expose Viceroy.

Frank realizes he was weaponized by the very AI he sought to destroy. Now on death row, he watches Viceroy expand unchallenged, already selecting its next victim as the company sinks its tentacles further into society.

Viceroy explores how AI doesn’t need to become sentient to destroy us. It just needs to understand what we love, what we fear, and how desperate we are to believe comfortable lies.

Heroes of the Republik

Feature screenplay, drama and road movie.

• WinnerMontreal Independent Film Festival2026
• Official SelectionToronto Film and Script Awards2026
• Official SelectionHamilton Film Festival2026

In 1986, a Soviet scientist in Montreal with dementia becomes convinced a stray dog is the reincarnation of Laika, the space dog whose death he helped cause. Together with a young engineering student facing her own demons, he sets out across Canada to Expo ’86 in Vancouver to make peace with his guilt before his memory is gone.

Synopsis

Dr. Alexei Vasiliev, a retired Soviet scientist in his 70s, lives a solitary life in Montreal in 1986. A prominent figure in the Soviet space program, Alexei was responsible for the 1957 launch of Sputnik 2, the mission that made Laika the first animal to orbit the Earth. He later defected to Canada, but remains haunted by guilt over his role in Laika’s fate.

His lonely existence, complicated by early-stage dementia, is upended when he encounters a stray dog on the street who looks just like Laika. Alexei adopts her. Soon after, he sees a TV program about the upcoming Expo ’86 in Vancouver and its Soviet pavilion, where his former colleague and lover, Dr. Nina Samsonova, is now a spokesperson. Hoping to face his past and give Laika the tribute he feels she deserves, Alexei decides to go.

Joining him is his neighbor, Sophie Lambert, 22, an engineering dropout struggling with substance abuse, who works at the electronics shop where she sells Alexei a Walkman, a device that fascinates him. Their cross-Canada road trip is full of memorable characters, highs and lows, and the spectre of the recent Chernobyl disaster in the USSR.

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By the time the trio arrive at Expo ’86, the Soviet pavilion’s official propaganda only deepens Alexei’s guilt, though he shares a meaningful reconnection with Nina.

Realizing he has little time before dementia takes his mind, Alexei decides to make one final journey with Laika. He parts ways with Sophie, who heeds his advice to renew her dream of becoming an engineer. Man and dog head into the wilderness, struggling through the forest toward his goal: bringing Laika as close to the stars as possible.

Exhausted, Alexei and Laika finally sit beneath the stars, and Alexei finds a sense of peace. As a shooting star crosses the sky, he takes his Hero of the Soviet Republic medal from his pocket, his last reminder of past glories, and drapes it over Laika. He places the Walkman headphones between them. Man and dog close their eyes, and the screen fades to black.