London-based doc specialist Journeyman Pictures has acquired world sales rights for “Can’t Feel Nothing,” the sophomore feature of U.S. filmmaker David Borenstein (“Dream Empire”), which had its world premiere at leading doc film festival CPH:DOX in the F:act Award section dedicated to investigative journalism.
“Behind David’s entertaining approach to his subject lies an ambitious exploration of something that deeply affects every single one of us,” Emma Simpson, head of acquisitions and development at Journeyman, says.
Laced with dark humor and narrated by Borenstein, a self-confessed phone addict who produces tech films for networks around the world, the film takes us on a globe-trotting journey to meet some of those who are pulling the strings that leave the rest of us, as he describes it, “numb.”
“I’ve observed first-hand the insidious ways in which internet companies exploit human emotions,” he says. “These corporations have erected Kafkaesque architectures beneath the digital veneer, manipulating our emotions with both covert and brazen tactics.”
The film is divided into chapters dedicated to human emotions, focusing on character-driven stories: in America, we meet an internet troll adept at orchestrating anger, a successful agent for celebrity pet influencers, and a dominatrix who specializes in shame.
The dominatrix, Mistress Harley, explains how she controls her clients through cameras placed in every room of their house. “[This] becomes a metaphor for high-tech domination,” Borenstein tells PvNew, adding, “I found her candour and honesty about what she does refreshing – I am always interviewing people when I do science docs whose job is to dominate and control people on the internet, but she’s the first person doing that to tell me the truth!”
In Macedonia, we follow Elena, a surgeon who writes fake news articles in her spare time to pay for her medical school fees. Traveling on to Russia, the director gets unprecedented access to a masked influencer committed to fostering pride and patriotism.
The film also takes us to China, where the director lived for nearly a decade, to meet a burned-out live streamer working round the clock in a so-called “love factory,” where superstar influencers can earn tens of thousands of dollars a month in direct donations from fans.
We travel on to Yiwu, China’s e-commerce capital, where factory work has been replaced with fierce market strategies. “There are so many people working on manipulating emotions in these industrial settings: people who were once working in factories in China now speculate on emotions online. Many of them are just desperate, in the same position as factory workers were half a generation ago,” says Borenstein.
In an extreme illustration of this, Borenstein meets and films a live streamer who is literally killing himself as he drinks liters of liquor daily to create entertainment on his show to try and make a living.
Between chapters, the film is sprinkled with archival footage of pseudo-scientific experiments meant to measure emotions, to prompt a reflection about their definition and how they can be manipulated.
“Obviously, if we start relying on this tech to start creating emotional experiences, I can’t help reflecting that it will flatten our emotional spectrum,” Borenstein says.
Hence the film’s title, which has a double meaning. “The powers that be on the internet will not allow us to feel ‘nothing,’ they’re bombarding us: we’re not worth any money if we feel nothing. But, colloquially, it also means ‘I have no emotion, I can’t feel anything,’” he explains.
Concluding on an optimistic note, the director tells PvNew: “It’s a constant struggle and we’re all in it. What’s important is to keep up this discussion. What I’m trying to do with my film is to create a space for people to reflect on this. There will be a time when we’ll be able to engage in changing our behavior collectively – we’re a collective species – unless we all do it together, it’s difficult to imagine.”
Written by Borenstein and Christian Einshøj (“The Mountains,” “Haunted”), “Can’t Feel Nothing” is produced by Mikkel Jersin, Katrin Pors and Eva Jakobsen of Copenhagen-based outfit Snowglobe.
CPH:DOX runs in and around Copenhagen until March 24.
