Michael Bicarregui is an Oxford-based filmmaker with a love for all things tragi-comic, or 'tongue-in-bleak'. Whilst developing Overpowered, Michael has worked on numerous film and HETV productions, produced video for various charities, and has taught filmmaking as part of the BFI Academy and in outreach programmes working with young people in the local community. Michael has a Master’s degree in Film Aesthetics from Oxford University.

The film industry often concerns itself with fantasy worlds, but what use is super-strength against governments that cut arts funding? Society teaches young people that if we try hard enough, chase our dreams with enough obsessive hunger, we can achieve anything. Yet over the five years since I graduated from university, I’ve watched my cohort swallow the unhappy realisation that the hours between nine and five are unlikely to be fulfilling ones. In the writing, shooting, and editing of Overpowered, I was constantly angling for a crucial balance between empathy and mockery: exploring sincerely the angst of my generation's struggle to build workable lives around our interests and creativity, while treating our expectations, and our entitlement, with a generous serving of self-awareness. Ultimately, I hope the film touches on something recognisable: what it means to grow up into a society that does not value our powers - whatever those may be.