I'm Not A Robot

Do you struggle with captchas? They vary in complexity, but one of the more annoying types is the fuzzy photo divided into squares in which one is asked to click on each one featuring a particular type of item. There are many ways to mess these up – but what if you mess them up repeatedly? Might you start to wonder?

“You wouldn’t be the first to find out this way,” says the man from customer service when Lara (Ellen Parren) calls.

Victoria Warmerdan’s Oscar-shortlisted short film opens an closes with a cover of Radiohead’s Creep, which might be interpreted in a number of ways, depending on one’s perspective. Lara is listening to it in the shared office where she works as part of a record company, focusing on the creative side of operations. She gets along with her colleagues. The woman at the next desk assures her that she doesn’t come across as cold, something that is queried in the self-administered test to which the captcha eventually directs her. Diagnosing oneself with anything based on a quiz on the internet is, of course, fraught with risk, and no adequate support is offered to accompany this one. So Lara calls her boyfriend, Daan (Henry van Loon), and it’s his behaviour that plunges her into Kafkaesque despair.

Apart from a saggy stretch in the middle when a joke about not being able to get any privacy is overplayed, I’m Not A Robot displays sharp comic timing and is highly effective in balancing the horror and the humour inherent in Lara’s situation. Warmerdan makes a myriad keen observations along the way, exploring different aspects of our relationships with technology and with one another. Underlying all the rest are questions about what it means to be rational in today’s world, as we are positioned between the poles of strict yet often underinformed AI logic and the increasingly bizarre notions that humans hold about one another – in particular, about women.

Deliciously absurdist and coolly delivered, this is a timely treat.