Age: 33
female
Madeline Sharafian (born February 1, 1993) is an American film director, screenwriter, and storyboard artist. She is best known for her work at Pixar, including directing the short film Burrow (2020) and the feature film Elio (2025). Description above from the Wikipedia article Madeline Sharafian, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Many years in the future, humans have accumulated so much garbage that they begin to jettison it into space. Over time as garbage begins to collect in orbit, another moon is formed, the Garbage Moon. Some medical/laboratory waste is thrown away, and unfortunately that contains some rats who have been exposed to some such treatment that makes them incredibly intelligent, capable of human speech, and able to exist without oxygen. The lab rats have managed to survive and create a colony on the garbage moon. NASA notices the activity on the new moon, and sends people up to investigate. Two astronauts (Aloysius and John) are tasked with the mission, and they are friendly enough as colleagues but they are very different men. Aloysius wants to continue observing the rats, but John thinks it's a waste of time and they should kill the rats; unfortunately before anything can be fully discussed, John is accidentally killed. The rats interpret this as Aloysius being their hero, and saving them. They begin a dialogue, and while Aloysius continues to study them, he tells the moon rats how their cousins on earth are treated. He's ashamed but he's honest. The moon rats realize that there is a way to give everyone what they want, and convince Aloysius to take a delegation back to earth. There is division between rats who think their moon should be for moon rats only; classic xenophobic struggle.
