Markers: Films that push the boundaries of the documentary form
After El General, Mexican-American director Natalia Almada wins her second Documentary Directing Award at Sundance with this stunning visual essay about the place of technology in our lives. Intimate in scope yet epic in scale, and featuring an impressive score by the Kronos Quartet, Users invites us to question how the machines we use every day may end up changing the planet, and us, forever. As technical progress seems inevitable, meditative sequences reassess its dehumanizing potential and ordinary people's lack of agency to direct its course—philosophical reflections that are even more resonant in the present context of social isolation and total dependency on technology. A synthetic narration created from the author's real voice adds another layer of eeriness to Almada's musings, as she interrogates her own children's future in a world deprived of nature as we knew it. There are no easy answers, but users need to start asking questions. Charlotte Selb
This event has been financially assisted by the Ontario Cultural Attractions Fund of the Government of Ontario through the Ministry of Heritage, Sport, Tourism and Culture Industries, administered by the Ontario Cultural Attractions Fund Corporation.