Synthetic Sincerity

A university research lab is trying to build authentic AI characters, and they've licensed a documentary filmmaker's back catalogue to teach them what's missing.

The Synthetic Sincerity Lab, based at the University of Southern England, is on a mission to crack the code of human authenticity. Professor SonG has turned to the work of filmmaker Marc Isaacs for answers, licensing his films to study what their AI creations lack. In return, Isaacs gets to document the lab's process. What unfolds is a playful and disorienting blend of documentary and fiction, where the boundaries between what's real and what's fabricated keep shifting under your feet. Just when you think you've figured out the game, Synthetic Sincerity pulls the rug again. Witty, inventive and genuinely slippery, it's a film that uses humour and clever storytelling to ask what happens to the human face when AI starts learning to fake it.