In Pulsar, the second feature by Alex Stockman, the ‘wireless fidelity’ of two lovers is put to the test by a mysterious hacker. Stockman, who competed for a Tiger Award in 2001 with I Know I’ll See Your Face Again, claustrophobically shows how communication technology dominates our lives. The global hot spot seems to increasingly make us impatient and vulnerable. That is discovered by Samuel, who stays behind in Brussels when his girlfriend Mireille leaves for work experience in New York. Several days later, Sam’s computer is hacked. From then on he regularly sees ‘connection lost’ on his screen. The hacker manages to upset Samuel’s life completely. Falling into a state of paranoia, he puts all his hope in wifi-blocking paint. The devil wears digital in Pulsar; the modem as creeping poison. Apart from being a technological thriller, Pulsar is secretly also a tribute to analogue and comprehensible information bearers such as the vinyl record, the Polaroid photo, Super-8 film and the handwritten letter.
