DELISTED | Omeleto

A group gathers.


It is a time of displacement, struggle and social instability. The government uses an A.I. created by a company named Syb1l to "delist" people, essentially making them unable to participate in society if they are deemed problematic in any way, even for speaking up or attending protests. But as more people are delisted and society grows increasingly unstable as their jobs disappear, they use their invisibility to gather, organize, and fight back.

Directed and written by Michael Patrick Clarkson, this dystopian sci-fi drama details a rising war between the institutions that embrace A.I. and the growing number of people who oppose it. With chilly, sleek visuals and a heady sweep in pacing and scale, it's a narrative told with bold strokes, interested in how large entities exert influence over people's lives as an overreaching A.I. insinuates itself into the deepest recesses of government, policy and economy.

We meet the fallout first, as a group of the disenfranchised gather, and then we backtrack to earlier, as various members of the group find themselves in the crosshairs of social fallout. A teacher, Nicola, finds herself disenfranchised for attending a protest and posting footage of a violent incident on her social media; Syb1l, led by company spokesperson Sarah, uses its A.I. to "recontextualize" the footage, which leads to her arrest. A journalist, Brandon, is iced out of his digital platform for his writing, and becomes incensed when his friends don't see the seriousness of what's happened to him because they believe the footage they've seen. One by one, people find their lives disrupted by Syb1l's A.I., Apollo.

The urgent storytelling is unequivocal about the vast gulf between the company that has insinuated its technology into the deepest recesses of government and economy, but what's most fascinating is its synthesis of ideas already in our news today: domestic terrorism, deep fakes, job redundancy, its knotty deployment into the military and the surveillance state. We watch as these ideas coalesce around a group of ordinary people, who slowly lose their livelihoods, their digital identities and then their ability to participate in much of society, which has become increasingly online-based. Like dominoes falling, we see how one prompt at the institution with no guardrails swiftly destabilizes the life of ordinary citizens.

An ensemble cast led by actors Katie Parker, Alex Bhat, Rosalind Halstead and Charlie Hiscock allows for a human connection in a sweeping story, which forgoes a deep immersion into any one character, instead privileging a more panoramic scope that takes us behind the scenes at Syb1l, at home with those affected and then in a cold, dark gathering place where the delisted gather. But in their gathering and sharing of experiences, they find a spark among themselves -- to organize, resist and embrace their humanity.

Unabashedly a cautionary tale, DELISTED is essentially a narrative about ideas: ideas that shape policies, which then shape the lived experience of humans. Focusing on ideas around A.I., it is frankly alarming, because it weaves together pieces that are already happening in current events. Though its worldview is anxious, the film still leaves viewers with hope, as the delisted find a way to make their voices heard. Even when their gathering is shut down, they still find a way to speak out and make themselves heard. They remember they "need to be more human than ever" in the face of a world in danger of forgetting human dignity altogether.


DELISTED. Courtesy of Michael Patrick Clarkson at https://humanstatement.org.