Synthetic Sincerity

In a highly entertaining and profoundly moving film, Marc Isaacs (The Filmmaker’s House) makes a deal with The Synthetic Sincerity Lab, an AI research project affiliated with the University of Southern England, where researchers are investigating the possibility of teaching AI characters authenticity, using characters from Isaacs’ documentaries to do so. In return, they allow Isaacs to film the process. What begins as an academic collaboration quickly unravels into a playful collision of fact and fiction. Guided by an AI character (co-created with Romanian actor Ilinca Manolache, a face familiar from Radu Jude’s recent filmography), Isaacs navigates this strange world, filming the work of Lynn – a rebellious and charismatic AI researcher from Beirut – and following an Uyghur chef who volunteers as a subject of study. Can this chef, in AI form, find the words he cannot express as a human being? Blending humor, invention, and philosophical inquiry, Synthetic Sincerity reflects on what is happening to the human face in the age of artificial intelligence – and what this might mean for the future of empathy, truth, and cinema itself.