PLASTIC SURGERY, directed by Guy Trevellyan, explores the urgent and unsettling consequences of plastic pollution through a lens both intimate and alarming.
The bold and atmospheric short film PLASTIC SURGERY will screen at the 2025 HollyShorts Film Festival as part of the festival’s celebrated Official Shorts Selection.
Set inside a hospital on the cusp of chaos, the film follows Dr. Terra, a young physician on her last shift before maternity leave, as she is confronted with a terrifying, hidden threat one already coursing through the bodies of her patients. As Terra races to understand what’s unfolding, she’s forced to confront a deeper question: Can she save others without first saving herself?
Inspired by real-world medical research and written during the COVID pandemic, PLASTIC SURGERY is a haunting metaphor for the ways plastic pollution is infiltrating our health. With microplastics now discovered in human arteries and organs, the film paints a visceral portrait of our toxic dependence, placing personal and planetary survival in the same breath.
Director Guy Trevellyan, a graduate of MetFilm School, brings a distinct visual precision and genre-forward sensibility to the project. After years working as an Assistant Director with celebrated filmmakers such as Wes Anderson, Greta Gerwig, Michael Sarnoski, and Shawn Levy, Trevellyan steps into his own voice with a short that is as socially conscious as it is cinematic. He founded Nice Guy Pictures in 2024 with a mission to tell stories that illuminate truth, family, and belonging, often with an urgent edge.
In PLASTIC SURGERY, Dr. Terra becomes a symbol of Mother Nature herself nurturing, endangered, and at a crossroads. As she battles for answers inside the sterile corridors of modern medicine, her moral dilemma echoes a broader ecological truth: we are all consuming what we’ve created, and it’s already reshaping us from within.
With its genre-bending tension and timely message, PLASTIC SURGERY adds a provocative voice to the 2025 HollyShorts lineup, reminding us that the biggest threats to our future may already be inside us.
