Dear Gossips, 

The Hot Docs Festival, based in Toronto, is the largest documentary film festival in North America. Artificial Immortality, by award-winning Canadian filmmaker Ann Shin, opened Hot Docs 2021 yesterday. The film is about how technological advancement is making it possible for humans to achieve digital immortality. We can’t live forever but our emotions, our perspectives, and our memories, which of course shape our personalities, can be stored and then transferred into a virtual facsimile of you that can then “live” on in a robot that could, one day, respond like you, behave like you…be you? I think? I mean it’s a lot of mindf-ck science that I’m still trying to wrap my head around but the point is… it’s already happening. And in Artificial Immortality, Ann Shin investigates just how far along the artificial intelligence process really is (answer: they’ve done a lot more than you want to believe) and puts herself in the middle of this ethical dilemma – will humanity’s pursuit of the eternal actually enhance the human experience or will this actually lead to the end of human existence? 

 

The documentary argues that we urgently need to start thinking about this now. As Ann told us on The Social this week: 

The Hot Docs Festival runs until May 9. Check the website for more information on the full lineup of films available including Artificial Immortality.

 

Also head to Variety to read a new interview with Ann Shin about her film and her upcoming projects in development through Fathom Film Group, the female-led production company she founded 15 years ago. She is one of Canada’s most thoughtful and talented storytellers and her new book, The Last Exiles, was also just released earlier this month. 

Yours in gossip,

Lainey