FANTASIA24 REVIEW: Infinite Summer [2025]

Rating: NR | Runtime: 94 minutes
Release Date: April 11th, 2025 (Estonia) / September 26th, 2025 (USA)
Studio: Lanzadera Films / IndiePix
Director(s): Miguel Llansó
Writer(s): Miguel Llansó

Let’s play extreme dating.

I was nervous when looking at the images released for Miguel Llansó’s latest feature Infinite Summer. They looked too polished. I’m used to the filmmaker’s Ethiopian productions Crumbs and Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway with their DIY lo-fi sci-fi aesthetic, so the special effects work of smoky arms and cosmic color threw me for a loop. Not that he couldn’t make polish work with the same quirky charm as before. I simply had to get on-board with reality and leave my expectations behind.

You should too because he’s crafted another wildly idiosyncratic adventure around Mia’s (Teele Kaljuvee-O’Brock) last high school summer. Unsure of what she wants to do and to which colleges she should apply, her hope is to clear her mind with a fun month spent away from home (and Ivo Uukkivi’s Dad and Anne Paluver’s Grandma) alongside an old friend Grete (Johanna-Aurelia Rosin) who already graduated and has been studying abroad. A lot happens in a year, though. Whereas Mia is still the straight-A, straight edge student, Grete has evolved to sex, drugs, and Sarah (Hannah Gross).

So, rather than be one half of a whole, Mia becomes the third wheel attached to Grete and Sarah’s party. Anytime she tries to engage her friend in something she thinks is cool, Sarah interrupts and steals her attention. Then the boys arrive. Then the alcohol. Finally, Mia (who already went out of her way not to ditch Grete when Sissi Nylia Benita’s newcomer asks despite being ditched herself) gets fed up with being judged as the quiet girl in the corner and goes inside to use her neural VR device to play “Extreme Dating” and unwitting bring Dr. Mindfulness (Ciaron Davies) into their lives.

There’s a line during the opening prologue about an open-air zoo where the animals learn to forget they’re in captivity that resonates once we see how technology is used by Mia and the others. It’s similar to how we use it today—volunteering our data and identity to corporations and the government in exchange for the convenience of instant social interactions. We are captive to the terms and conditions we do not read (but love to get angry about when someone finally points out the fine print). We accept our exploitation as an unavoidable cost to our freedom.

Llansó alludes to this via an employee of the enigmatic Eleusis company who is surveilling (and laughing at) everything that goes on just like the Interpol detectives (Katariina Unt’s Katrin and Steve Vanoni’s Jack—the most Llansó characters of the bunch) searching for the entity behind a potential cyber-crime. Add the blind trust we give to online purveyors selling us goods that they themselves are reselling with less knowledge and the journey taken by these women can’t help but end in tragedy … or salvation depending on whether you believe the product is providing them entry to a new plane of existence rather than simply erasing them from this one.

It’s peer pressure. Escapism. Experimentation. It’s a desire to rebel against authority and a spiritual awakening. Do we know what’s going on? Surely not. While Infinite Summer might be the best looking Llansó film of the three I’ve seen, it’s also the most confounding at face value. Just because we can sense the ideas swirling at the back of the narrative doesn’t mean we fully grasp the construct he’s projected them upon. But that’s also part of the appeal. To go with the flow, experience the first-person shifts to app-generated emotion-based meditation, and enjoy the eccentric comedy only Llansó can deliver.