Sabine Hickey
Film
THIS ONE IS FAKE
I make fiction and nonfiction films that showcase my skills in immersive sound design, SFX, color grading, as well as a deep passion for
engagement with archival material.
My practice balances narrative projects I write, produce, and direct with
archival shorts which recontextualize existing footage.
My films investigate poetry, collective memory/the human condition,
technological determinism, and showcase social critique.
Maladaptive (2026)
Written & Directed by Sabine Hickey
Maladaptive daydreaming is a state of deep, immersive fantasy in which a person mentally withdraws from their immediate reality, often as an
unconscious response to stress or trauma. This film explores how music is often used tofoster such dissociation, following one girl's singular experience of transporting into her subconscious and confronting her habit of reaching for sound the moment the world becomes too much.
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Written & Directed by Sabine Hickey
Apricity is a term for the fleeting warmth associated with winter sunshine. The film visually explores the conceptual adaptation of this word, using a poetic framework to examine the extent to which ‘apricity’ is limited to describing the sun. Ultimately, the film poses the question: Can something other than the sun be apricitous? Can the word’s inherent meaning transcend the simple condition of the weather? Most importantly, can a person feel apricitous?
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Directed & Produced by Sabine Hickey
The Endup is a short film about the unlikely overlap between the Irish immigrant community and the San Francisco rave scene in the 1990s. The film centers on my father, who left Malahide, Dublin in 1993 and found himself, like many young Irish immigrants at the time, drawn into the city's underground music culture. The film follows how music and nightlife became a refuge and a means of reinvention for people far from home. Part family portrait, part cultural history, it is ultimately a meditation on identity, migration, and the ways transient spaces can forge lasting ties.
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The Wisdom of David Lynch (2026)
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Another Family Portrait (2025)
My mother’s childhood unfolded as a scattered map of places across the United States, constantly moving and never rooted in one home long enough to gather a continuous story. As a result, many of her baby photographs remained unseen for decades, tucked away in boxes of fragmented memory.
During the Napa fires, my family rescued several of those boxes from my grandmother’s basement. What emerged was a small archive of rediscovered images: intimate, dislocated, and suspended between absence and presence. This project began as a gift to my mother, an attempt to trace belonging across dislocation. It evolved into an inquiry into how memory migrates, how photographs act as stubborn witnesses, and how family narratives are composed from rescued fragments.
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Lines of Protest,
Another Era of ICE (2025)
This project reimagines America’s political response to ICE violence through the lens of 1970s anti–Vietnam War protests. By blurring archival anti-war footage with images of NO-KINGs and ICE, the short invites audiences to confront the continuities between past and present state violence, to question narratives of progress, and to recognize the enduring power of collective resistance: urging viewers to reflect, mourn, and mobilize for systemic change.
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