Found this after typing a clever “nice short films” into YouTube. I had no idea that The New Yorker released short films and have nineteen Academy Award nominations (here’s a playlist). This one’s the second film to win1 (“Best Live Action Short”).
The setup is pretty funny. I love the director’s style. Ellen Parren is excellent as Lara. Nothing particularly remarkable or original about the story: “What if machines were sapient?” is a pretty old question to explore. The kind of intelligence you see in movies and stories like these is far, far away, regardless of TechBro promises. I am more interested in the behaviour of the humans towards these artificial beings. Tends to be pretty shitty most of the time and I do wonder why (there are exceptions).
Here it is on YouTube:
Could not for the life of me find out the first.↩︎