They Said There Were No Female Role Models.

Turns Out — They Were Just Removed from the Code.

For International Women’s Day, I created a dark satire short for the Higgsfield Action contest. Matilda is not a violent character. But she dreams.

In her dreams, frustration becomes cinematic. Power structures shatter. Egos explode into pixels. Outdated hierarchies collapse in slow motion.

It’s exaggerated. Stylized. Surreal.

But instead of destruction — she rewrites the code.

Inspired by pioneers like Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper, Matilda corrects the real glitch: Not people. Systems.

The action scene required for the Higgsfield AI contest becomes metaphor: In dreams, she breaks the illusion. In reality, she debugs it.

Before 1984, women made up 37% of computer science graduates in the U.S. After a marketing shift toward the “boy programmer” narrative, representation declined.

This film reframes that shift as a glitch in the cultural operating system.

They said there were no female role models.
They weren’t gone.
They were written out.

Matilda writes them back in.

She doesn’t destroy the system. She exposes it.

And when broken systems run outdated code, they crash on their own.