MPI is pleased to announce that four new projects have advanced into MPI’s Production Lab for their next stage of development. These films were developed through MPI’s Short Film Lab or Script Development Fellowship and are now moving forward into production.

You’ve Got Matches is a romantic comedy with a sci-fi twist by MPI filmmaker and 2025 Short Film Lab winner Monica Cecilia Lucas. The film follows a hopeless romantic and a curmudgeonly cynic who form an unexpected connection—and begin to question why their AI-powered dating apps seem determined to keep them apart.

Bird Finger is a dark comedy and political satire by MPI filmmakers Julien Lasseur and Brian Groh. Set in a world where speech violations are punished by the removal of a finger, the film uses sharp humor to explore the cost of speaking out.

The Last Word by MPI filmmaker Sarah Morford follows a BookTuber whose reliance on an AI recommendation app is challenged when she discovers a bookstore filled with banned and forgotten titles—forcing her to choose between comfort, conviction, and creative independence.

Negative Space is a dark satirical drama by MPI filmmaker Toby Fell-Holden. Set at an elite art college, the film follows a provocative photography professor whose classroom critique is recorded and taken out of context, triggering a spiraling institutional investigation. Through sharp tension and irony, the story explores artistic freedom, campus culture, and what happens when reputation and optics overshadow truth.