The Power of Data

I didn't want to make a film about danger. Danger implies an enemy, and the systems this film examines don't have enemies. They have users.

What interested me was structure: not the malice of an individual, but the logic through which certain architectures behave independently of the intentions of those who built them. That logic becomes visible only from a distance: historical, formal, almost schematic.

The systems the film examines do not inhabit physical places that can be filmed. They inhabit logical structures: protocols, flow diagrams, relational architectures. That is why the film contains no footage and no interviews: its constructed, schematic language is the argument, made before a single line of narration is spoken. The silhouette at its centre follows the same logic: flat, without interiority, neither threatening nor redeemed. It would have been easier to give it an arc. It would also have been dishonest.

What the film offers is the structure of the mechanism, exposed clearly enough to be seen. The weight of knowing, not the consolation of a solution.

The film is in dialogue with Shoshana Zuboff, Evgeny Morozov, Frank Pasquale, Bruce Schneier and Byung-Chul Han.