FRIEND Film Festival: Human-Machine Relationships on Screen

Theodore Twombly, an introverted writer, buys “Samantha”: an AI system designed to help him write. As he and Samantha grow closer, however, Theodore begins to fall in love with the system.

The quintessential “falling in love with technology” film, and the one that sticks in the public memory – and in Sam Altman’s, who (in)famously was inspired by the film in the development of ChatGPT and later used a replication of Scarlett Johansson’s voice in the system. In an age of companions-on-demand, Her remains a prescient exploration of this technology’s impact.

Lars, an awkward, lonely man living in his brother’s garage, gets a new lease on life after meeting his girlfriend: Bianca, a life-sized doll ordered from the internet.

Lars and the Real Girl could very easily have been a crude sex comedy, especially given the year in which it was made. Instead, Lars is a tremendously tender film: the story of a town coming together to not only accept, but nurture and support the relationship that forms between Lars and Bianca. It’s an exploration of how people use relationships with objects to navigate their own traumas and insecurities, and how the right community can make this a healthy exercise rather than a self-destructive one.

In 1980s New York City, Dog assembles Robot as a companion, and they become best buddies. But on a Labor Day outing to Coney Island, Dog is forced to abandon Robot at the beach.

Robot Dreams is an interesting twist on the creator-created paradigm. The created doesn’t go rogue or stray from its creator; rather, it simply develops into its own ‘person’. It grows up. In a way, it becomes an early-ages prelude to After Yang, screening later in this program; examining a human-machine relationship through each party’s perception of it.

Jake and Kyra purchase Yang, a techno-sapien, for their adopted daughter, Mika, to acquaint her with Chinese culture. But when Yang malfunctions, Jake must do everything to fix him.

After Yang isn’t interested in questioning whether people can form relationships with robots – it takes it as a matter of fact. Instead, the film is more interested in the idea of mourning this relationship. Is a malfunction the same as a death? Does a robot have its favourite memories flash before its eyes before going into the light? Do we even have permission to delve into a robot’s memories?