Just One Peek
Director: MULAN FU
Crew:Writer: MULAN FU. Producer: MULAN FU. Animator: MULAN FU; Sound Designer: ZEO YIN; MUSIC: ZEO YIN
Email:mulanfu.work@gmail.com
Synopsis
A girl is pulled into her phone’s whirlwind of doomscrolling, vanity, and viral chaos, struggling to escape its addictive grip.
Trailer
About the director
Mulan Fu is an award-winning director, animator, and creative producer whose work bridges intimate personal storytelling with bold design and visual innovation. With a keen focus on authentic family narratives and the psychological nuances of life in the digital age, her creative practice spans independent film, commercial animation, and branded creative direction.
Her animated short films — Journey, Stray Cat Ah Q, Beautiful, Sunflower Field, and Just One Peek — have received numerous awards and selections at international film festivals. In the commercial space, Mulan has led 2D animation and creative direction projects for clients including Team Wang Design, TaskForce PR, NYC Department of Education, EST Media, Condé Nast, MSCHF, 20th Century Animation, Pearl Studio, and Amazon Prime Video. She is currently a creative producer at HoYoverse. Mulan holds a BFA in Film & Television from NYU Tisch School of the Arts and an MA in Technology, Media, and Learning from Teachers College, Columbia University.
Filmmaker's note
We live in an era where the most valuable commodity on Earth is no longer oil or gold, but human attention. Just One Peek is an animated exploration of that theft. It is a film born from the nervous pacing we all do—the physical manifestations of an itch that can only be scratched by a glass screen. My primary intention is to call attention to the erosion of human agency. We often believe we are "using" our phones, but the film posits the opposite: the interface is using us. Through fluid, surrealist animation, we see the protagonist lose her footing—not just in space, but in her own desires and sense of time. She is no longer a consumer; she is a ghost in the machine, hunted by algorithms designed to keep her there.