Inside the Mansion of Guilt: Kaitz Brebner on Building a Gothic Psychological Drama with AI

Guilt has played a central role in my life. The idea was born when I tried to imagine guilt as a physical being—a dark, seductive woman with a mansion of regrets, always whispering promises and criticisms. Growing up with a strict Soviet upbringing, I internalized guilt early—whether I ate too much or too little, rested or worked too hard, I always felt I was failing someone. Over time, my mother’s voice became my own inner judge. This film is a cathartic act: giving guilt a face so I could finally confront her. The idea resonated with the character of Helene from Agnon’s story, on the assimilation of consciousness into guilt's seductive maze.

Inspired by Tim Burton’s aesthetic and surrealism, I wanted to create a film that fuses the strange with the soulful. The animation employs dynamic, symbolic camera movements that echo the psychological entrapment of the protagonist. Guilt’s Orgasm explores the odd beauty of emotional pain—and the liberation in naming it.

Guilt’s Orgasm is an animated, surreal psychological drama created entirely with cutting-edge AI tools. At its core lies a single provocative question: What if the emotion of guilt took physical form? The result is a gothic allegory—a sensual, haunting portrait of a young man’s psychological struggle with an older woman who personifies guilt. The film draws inspiration from literary classics like Agnon’s The Lady and the Peddler and combines it with a hyper-contemporary visual and narrative style that could only be achieved using AI.

Thematically, the film deals with deep psychological patterns, human vulnerability, manipulation, memory, and shame. Technically, it is a demonstration of how AI is no longer a gimmick, but a serious storytelling tool. Many early AI-generated films emphasized novelty and visual spectacle over substance. My aim with Guilt’s Orgasm was to do the opposite: to prove that AI can be a channel for emotionally rich, artistically sophisticated, and narratively complex cinema.

The AI tools allowed me to unleash my creativity and craft sharp, gothic imagery – portraying the relationship with Guilt as a chess game where the pieces themselves are living characters. As the plot unfolds, the mansion becomes increasingly surreal and distorted, evolving from the concrete idea of two people in a gothic house into a dark allegory. Throughout the story, Guilt manipulates the protagonist like a puppet on strings, while he, in turn, attempts to understand the inner workings of guilt – reflected in scenes where he carefully dismantles a pendulum clock filled with intricate gears and mechanisms.

In creating Guilt’s Orgasm, I made a deliberate choice to give the protagonist my own face. Since the story reflects my personal journey and emotional battle with guilt, it felt natural—and necessary—to embody it directly. Thanks to the new possibilities offered by AI technology, where any character can wear any face, I was able to merge my inner world with the film’s outer narrative. This decision deepened the film’s emotional authenticity, blurring the lines between creator and creation, memory and imagination.

As a seasoned filmmaker, choosing to create “Guilt's Orgasm” using AI was both a personal and artistic breakthrough. These new tools have given me a level of creative freedom I never had before—allowing me to work independently, on my own terms, without relying on a producer with conflicting priorities or an animator with a separate vision. For the first time, I could fully realize a project that is entirely mine - from concept to final frame. Beyond the practical advantages, I’m also deeply curious about these technologies. I approach them not just as tools, but as a new artistic language - one I believe will become a defining force in the future of cinema.