The Institution
Iris Complex began in 2018 with its first film, Waltz of Despondency. It has since grown from a filmmaking practice into an institution for film, performance, and research into the human soul. Iris Complex is neither a production company nor a collective. It makes its own films, presents them alongside live performance, and pursues research as an equal part of its work. Its screenings open with a live performance and close in conversation with the audience. It is building toward a hybrid structure: a studio that makes and presents work, joined by a nonprofit arm for research, residencies, and artists beyond its own.
Explore the research arm
The Worldview
A stranger in Toronto once told me I have an eye for beauty in unusual places. I have held on to that. It is the Iris in Iris Complex. The Complex is the human soul, in all its complexity. What follows is some of what the institution believes.
Deadly comfort often looks noble. It often looks like duty.
It takes two forms: the life never begun, and the life abandoned the moment it stopped paying out.
People have outsourced trust in their own direct experience. Deadly comfort fills the space where self-trust should be.
The opposite of deadly comfort is trusting yourself enough to begin, and refusing to give up on yourself when progress is slow.
Cedieu
Cedieu is the founding director of Iris Complex. Trained as a biomedical engineer at the Florida Institute of Technology, he conducted research in vascular tissue engineering there and in noninvasive kidney imaging at the University of Texas at Austin. He brings that discipline to the study of human experience. He has directed three short films: Waltz of Despondency (2019), What Would You Do For Love (2019), and Garden Tears (2025). With Garden Tears, drawn by Austin's love of live performance, he began opening screenings with live performances, a practice now central to Iris Complex. His travels, and the people and cultures he meets along the way, shape the work. He is currently developing Tethered, a spy-fantasy film.
Screenings
Garden Tears. Premiere, salon screening, Travis Heights, Austin. October 2025. Opened by dancer Megan Davidson, with saxophonist OGO and pianist Juixce performing Duke Ellington's "In a Sentimental Mood."
Garden Tears. The Retreat Yoga Studio, North Austin. November 2025. Opened by a live set from Dos Almas.
Both screenings closed with a conversation with the audience.